The Female Body, Christianity, and Colonial Modernity: Representation of Foot-bound Women in Alicia Little’s Travelogues

ABSTRACT

This article explores Alicia Little’s presentation of foot-bound women in her travelogues and periodical essays. Her exploration of the anti-footbinding movement saw the dissemination of Western feminist ideas in China. However, as the article demonstrates, this cross-cultural exchange was a dominantly Western feminist movement compromised by an enlightenment project based on the notion of modern womanhood or colonial modernity. To understand the background, the article gives an overview of the history of footbinding, followed by the representation of foot-bound women in Little’s travelogues to unpack the idea of modern womanhood. Her presentation of Christianity offers important clues to understanding her writings on the anti-footbinding movement. This article also explores how Little presents her feminist and Christian ideas of modern womanhood, that are at odds with the traditional Chinese womanhood. In contextualizing Little’s role in the anti-footbinding movement, this paper reveals the complicated dynamics between Western feminism, the patriarchal Chinese society, and foot-bound women.

KEYWORDS:

• Alicia Little
• Christianity
• feminism
• colonial modernity
• the anti-foot binding movement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Chinese Government Scholarship.