Power and Position in Women’s Biographies: Explaining Success in the Official Histories of the Han

Abstract

<p>The first collections of women’s biographies were produced during the Han dynasty, and a significant proportion of these focus on the empresses and senior consorts who achieved enormous power and political importance through their marriage into the imperial house. In a hereditary system in which emperors and kings inherited their positions at the top of the ruling elite from their fathers, the circumstances in which these women came to occupy positions of authority needed to be explained. For a large number of the most senior women in the imperial house, their position was also effectively hereditary, given that they were born into one of the aristocratic consort lineages that provided spouses to emperors. However, this is far from being the only way for women to achieve political power. This paper focuses on the non-genealogical explanations provided by the official histories of the Han for the rise to eminence of a succession of women from both aristocratic and non-aristocratic families, focusing on auspicious signs and divinations, the working of pure chance, and the role played by women’s education in validating their appointment as empress or senior consort.<br></p>