74 China in World History
active physically and, at times, very assertive politically (e.g. Empress
Wu). In the Song period, male Confucian scholars attacked nomadic cul-
tures for their immorality in allowing women so much freedom of move-
ment and in their custom of the levirate, in which a widow was expected
to marry her husband’s brother. Song male Confucians saw the levirate
as a form of incest and outlawed it in Chinese society. In their horror at
the levirate, some scholars argued that widows should never remarry
at all, and some went so far as to praise widows who committed sui-
cide in order to avoid remarriage. In reaction against their “uncivilized”
nomadic neighbors, many Chinese literati began to emphasize more than
ever that a woman’s proper place was in the home and nowhere else.
Foot-binding, which fi rst became popular in the Song dynasty, prob-
ably began with court dancers who bound their feet in the belief that small
feet were more attractive on a female dancer. In the Song, mothers and
grandmothers began binding their daughters’ feet at four to six years of
age. They took a long strip of cloth, bent the four smaller toes down under
the foot, leaving the big toe in place, and wrapped the foot tightly, pull-
ing the front and back of the foot together. As the growing foot pushed in
vain against the binding, the arch bent and broke, and the heel was pulled
under the foot to form its own “natural high heel.” The tightly wrapped
toes withered, and with circulation impaired, there was always a danger
of blood poisoning. The pain was excruciating for at least two years; the
result was a tiny, cramped foot three to six inches long.
Why did mothers and grandmothers subject their daughters to such
pain so needlessly? Scholars still argue over this question, but the main
motivation probably was the quest for social status. Song society was
more fl uid than Chinese society had ever been, and prominent families
were very concerned to marry their daughters to other families of equal
or greater prominence. Marriages were arranged by parents for the ben-
efi t of the family, and a high-status marriage was very desirable for both
the daughter and her family. In this kind of competitive atmosphere,
anything that made a daughter seem more attractive, more genteel, and
more virtuous would improve her marriage prospects. Foot-binding
was associated with virtue because it suggested that the girl with bound
feet was not one to “run around wildly” and demonstrated that she
came from a good family that could afford to have her confi ned at home
like a “good girl.”
Ironically, the bound foot also came to have erotic associations. The
foot was always covered, and some males found that unwrapping, fon-
dling, even sucking a woman’s bound foot was sexually exciting. Finally,
women covered their bound feet with beautiful embroidered cloth shoes,