| 英文摘要 |
Resistance to marriage is a significant theme found
often in the legends of Chinese female deities. Based on
ananalysis of the Goddess He Xiangu (Transcendent Maiden
He) cult in Zengcheng, Guangdong and paternal great-aunt
worship in the Greater Pearl River Delta—both examples of
cults centering on unmarried females—this article shows
that female resistance to marriage was widely accepted and
practiced in the regional custom. Before the Ming-Qing
period, not only was this practice considered normative, but
such women were even promoted as deities or family
ancestresses. Furthermore, while the lineage system became
socially dominant in the Ming-Qing period, the anti-marriage
females found in early local or family legends had been
transformed into a specific kind of lineage ancestress—the
“great-aunt.” Lineage groups appropriated the ancestral
worship dedicated to such figures to construct community
identity and renew it over time. By focusing on the
perceived potential pollution or damaging impact of unmarried women, previous studies have generally
interpreted female marriage resistanceas opposition to the
Chinese patrilineal-virilocal social structure. However,
investigation into the unmarried female cult in the Greater
Pearl River Delta region reveals that as well as being seen as
potentially threatening to the patrilineal social order, the
practice of female marriage resistance was also often viewed
as supportive of this same social order. Depending on the
specific community’s choices and procedures, unmarried
women represented either polluting or deified symbolic
powers, were seen to either threaten or support the
established social order, and were positioned socially either
at the periphery or the center. |
