Boundaries and Bodhisattvas: Women, Lay Buddhism, and Religious Spaces in Late Imperial China

A striking new perspective on women, religious spaces, and literary culture during the Ming and Qing eras

From the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries, Neo-Confucian ideology sought to reinforce the seclusion of women within the domestic sphere, while flourishing lay Buddhism increasingly fueled their passion for visiting temples and going on distant pilgrimages. Xu Ma explores this cultural tension to reveal how religious spaces--physical, imagined, and embodied--emerged as a ＂third social space＂ that both sustained and subverted the Confucian binaries of inside and outside, public and private.

Drawing on an impressive range of sources, from popular fiction and drama to biographical accounts and archaeological evidence, Ma shows how women’s religious engagement was simultaneously celebrated and condemned in literary and cultural imagination. Outdoor temples were sites of controversy, where women were portrayed as both vulnerable to corruption yet also capable of transcendent manipulation. Through domestic altars and household shrines, women redefined marital and gendered dynamics on their own terms. Eventually, even the female body itself became a sacred site of meaning.

This richly interdisciplinary study redefines the place of women in Chinese religious and cultural history. By blending gender studies, spatial theory, and literary analysis, Boundaries and Bodhisattvas demonstrates how women’s bodies and hearts reconfigured both Confucian gender paradigms and the broader religious landscape of late imperial China. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the intersections of gender, religion, and cultural narratives.

Xu Ma is assistant professor of religious studies at Lafayette College.