In Concubines in Public: The Rise of the Social Wife in Republican China, Xia Shi traces the origin of the “social wife” to late Qing diplomatic encounters with the West and maps its evolution through the social and cultural transformations that shaped the Republican era. Sharing much in common with, although distinct from the “diplomatic wife” and “New Woman” that Shi references for comparative purposes, the social wife accompanied her husband at social gatherings and participated in organizations that promoted progressive causes. The book spotlights the role of concubines, who she claims were the first social wives, and identifies how the practice of concubinage adapted to changing social conditions that enabled it to not only survive but thrive in the face of laws and campaigns that sought to curb it.
The book includes four chapters, organized chronologically, with an introduction and epilogue. Chapter one attributes the emergence of the social wife as a new public role for women to the increase in diplomatic exchanges with Western countries, where it was customary for wives to accompany their husbands to social events. Women played important, if gendered, roles in building relationships and strengthening ties, particularly in the social gatherings (chahui) they hosted. Since Confucian gender norms associated female virtue with seclusion, the principal wife was reluctant to break those norms. Shi argues that this created an opening for concubines. Chapter two explains that concubines who had previously been courtesans were well positioned to assume the role of social wife, as they were accustomed to socializing with men. Chapter three looks at a new group of women who became concubines in the early 20th century – female students – and chapter four explores the controversies and debates sparked by the presence of concubines in public schools and women’s organizations.
In the absence of sources written by concubines, Shi searches for references to concubines in memoirs, newspapers, travel accounts, oral histories and biographies. A limitation of these sources is that they are written from the perspective of men, foreigners, journalists and in at least one case, a principal wife. Shi does a commendable job of piecing the evidence together, however fragmentary, and reading the sources against the grain. She uses a case-study approach to highlight changes in the practice of concubinage and women’s public roles.
Given the limited number of cases presented, however, Shi’s interpretation may overstate the role that concubines played as social wives at the expense of the principal wife. She does acknowledge that some principal wives stepped into the role of social wife, and she features a high-profile one: Madame Wellington Koo, whom she has also written about elsewhere. The book gives the impression that most social wives were concubines, and that a principal wife performing the role of social wife was a rarity (p. 71). Yet the dominance of principal wives in the civic associations discussed in chapter four, and the influence they wielded to exclude concubines from their associations, serve as testimony that principal wives did step into the role of social wife in greater numbers than concubines. It seems ironic, given the early association of the role of social wife with concubines, that concubines were to be excluded from the very public spaces dominated by social wives with the status of principal wife.
The analytical slipperiness of the term “social wife” becomes apparent in the second half of the book. In the first two chapters, concubines are portrayed as having a near monopoly on the role of social wife in the late Qing. In the last two chapters, however, principal wives are also described as performing the role of social wife, as evidenced by their public activities and leadership in civic organizations. The stigma associated with concubine status that Shi notes in the Republican era became the basis for the exclusion of concubines from schools and civic organizations, thereby denying concubines access to spaces where they could play the role of social wife. In this respect, status as concubine and identity as social wife became disaggregated, an important implication that is overlooked in the book.
On the other hand, a Republican trend that might be overstated is what Shi describes as the “democratization of concubinage.” As she argues, “In contrast to the imperial era, the economic climate during the Republican period meant that a man did not need a substantial amount of money to acquire a concubine” (p. 32). That may well be true, but there were also prolonged periods of economic decline during the imperial era, with the most recent in the late Qing, when domestic rebellions, foreign wars and political corruption wreaked havoc on the economy. If more men of lesser means were acquiring concubines in the Republic, it was not likely due to worsening economic conditions. The evidence Shi provides to support the claim of the democratization of concubinage also seems anecdotal rather than representative. Newspaper coverage tends to sensationalize, and foreign observations capture snapshots rather than long-term trends.
The book places concubines front and centre, in both its title and on its front cover. In this respect, it makes an important contribution to women’s history and gender studies by bringing into the spotlight the concubines whose social activities paved the way for women’s greater participation in public spaces. Shi’s concept of the social wife offers a way to conceptualize the performative nature of wifehood – and by extension womanhood – in various social settings. More broadly, the book joins other studies that emphasize the continuities between the Qing and the Republic, and, in the epilogue, to the early years of the People’s Republic. The book would be appropriate for advanced undergraduate courses as well as graduate-level courses in women and gender studies.
