The Woman Question and Confucianism in Southern Vietnam during the Late Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Century

Kiều Nguyệt Nga is the main character in the well-known Nôm narrative poem Lục Vân Tiên by Nguyễn Đình Chiểu, the most famous Confucian scholar and poet of Southern Vietnam in the second half of the nineteenth century. This character represented the ideal of a woman for Nguyễn Đình Chiểu in Confucianism – viz. Sương Nguyệt Anh (1864–1921), who was Nguyễn Đình Chiểu’s fourth daughter. She was a poet and also the first female editor of a newspaper for women in Vietnam in modern times. This article examines the transformation of Confucian ideals from the literary character Kiều Nguyệt Nga to the historical figure of Sương Nguyệt Anh, who serves as a case study that contributes to clarifying the appearance of Confucianism and the woman question in the Southern Region during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. The popular and conservative Confucianism of Southern Vietnam had weakened under the influence of Western culture, but many elements were still reserved in the early twentieth century

Ancient history · Art · Literature · Neo-Confucianism · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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