1920年代中国におけるキリスト教主義の女子教育と結婚問題

―韓端慈女史の死に関わる報道をめぐって―

抄録

Inspired by a larger question concerning the role of Christian church schools in Chinese women’s education in the 1920s, this article is a case study of that influence in regards to the problem of marriage. Concretely, it offers a comparative analysis of how the views on marriage and divorce of the Chinese woman Han Duanci were, after her death, developed by two camps; a Christian group represented by the missionary Laura M. White and Li Guanfang publishing in the journal Nüduo, and a group of Chinese intelligentsia connected with Han Duanci advocating their ideas in Funü Pinglun.

While previous research on private Christian church schools has primarily focused on their methods of “education” − and in particular their alleged positive effects on the emancipation of Chinese women − the analysis in this paper shows that ideas concerning “marriage” played a central role in the discourse on emancipation. On the one hand, while church schools expected a married woman to play a restricted role in public life, they primarily envisioned her social role directed towards the private life within the family. In contrast, the vision of Han Duanci aimed to expand the public role of women, arguing for their economic and moral independence, and advocating social change to accommodate such a new type of woman.

The findings of this paper thus suggest that in order to elucidate the problem of women’s emancipation in China during the 1920s, research must beyond education and include discourse on marriage, work, and social environment.