When represented as the embodiment of Confucian oppression, Vietnamese women and their historical social position characterised all that was wrong with local culture – Chinese influence, patriarchal rule and Vietnamese backwardness. In this context, only the establishment of Westernstyle modernity in terms of secular ity, individualism and democracy could free Vietnamese women from the shackles of tradition. French colonial officials charged with implementing the civilising mission, Vietnamese nationalists advocating the adoption of Western institutions and interna- tional development organisations hoping to emancipate Vietnamese women from their traditional roles have collectively produced and perpetuated this model of Vietnamese In the second major model of Vietnamese womanhood – that of the ‘Woman’ embodying a uniquely national tradition – she paradoxically represents the country’s authentic traditions and she marks the country’s readiness for Western-style modernity. This image of Vietnamese womanhood relies upon the widely accepted claim that Vietnamese women enjoyed unparalleled property rights in the early modern period, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, demonstrating the country’s historic resistance to Chinese cultural domination. For the promoters of this model, the existence of a fifteenth century legal code that is believed to have guaranteed women equal property rights signalled the potential for the Vietnamese to adapt the ideals of a modern, industrialised society to their own traditions. A second generation of French colonial scholar officials, the Vietnamese legal scholars they trained to harmonise Western institutions with local traditions, Vietnamese nationalists and Western scholars hoping to link Vietnamese development with European modernisation narratives became the key engineers and transmitters of this particular model of Vietnamese womanhood
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..
