王氏 / Woman Wang

王氏 / Woman Wang is the unnamed woman at the center of [[JonathanSpence|史景迁]]’s [[TheDeathOfWomanWang|《王氏之死》]]. 148. 王氏之死：断井颓垣上的历史妆镜 stresses that even her personal name is lost; she enters the record through a murder case in [[Tancheng|郯城]], where she was married into the poor Ren household, fled with another man, was abandoned, returned through a Taoist temple, and was killed by her husband.

The episode treats Wang as a negative case for Female Self-Possession. It marks some biographical details as inference rather than fact: she may have grown up with few family protections and little mobility, but the archive mainly shows what others did to her. Her significance in the wiki is methodological as much as biographical: she shows why Microhistory From Hostile Archives has to reconstruct constrained lives from law, poverty, rumor, household power, and the fantasies preserved in [[LiaozhaiZhiyi|《聊斋志异》]].

Connections

• [[TheDeathOfWomanWang|《王氏之死》]] and [[JonathanSpence|史景迁]] - book and author that reconstruct the case.
• [[Tancheng|郯城]] - place where the case occurs.
• [[HuangLiuhong|黄六鸿]] and [[FuhuiQuanshu|《福惠全书》]] - magistrate and source record for the investigation.
• 清代性别法律秩序 / Qing Gender Legal Order and 清代女性继承限制 / Qing Female Inheritance Constraint - legal and kinship order that constrained Wang and other women.
• Female Self-Possession and Microhistory From Hostile Archives - conceptual significance of the case.