The Ban family lived in a dangerous world, one in which every shift in the political winds could mean dismissal, imprisonment, or even death. Emperors were notoriously paranoid about potential threats to their rule, and ambitious officials with the emperor’s ear frequently tried to take advantage of this fact by sowing suspicions about their rivals. Often a mere a connection to the wrong person was enough to ruin a person’s career. For example, when the historian Sima Qian, whose work laid the foundation for the Ban’s History of the Former Han Dynasty, dared to defend a disgraced friend, he was arrested, tortured, and ultimately castrated. Similarly, Ban Gu was imprisoned twice: the first time as the result of an anonymous letter to the Emperor Ming suggesting that the History of the Former Han Dynasty would cast the regime in a bad light, and the second time because of his association with a general who had fallen out of favor. It was Ban Gu’s death in prison after this second arrest that created the opportunity for his sister Ban Zhao to take over her father’s and brother’s project.

Ban Zhao was not immune from such dangers simply because she was a woman and a widow. She was a political figure of note in her own right, acting as an advisor to the imperial family and as a teacher for the palace ladies. Moreover, she had ambitions for her children, ambitions that required her to maintain her favored position in the imperial household. Thus, Ban Zhao’s Admonitions for Women, like all of her writings, must be read, to a certain extent, as a political document, one that was carefully crafted to meet with imperial approval, at the same time that it offered as few openings as possible for political enemies to twist her meaning to their advantage. Think about this political context as you read the documents included in the activity. Who were Ban Zhao’s potential readers? What opportunities and dangers did publication of the Admonitions for Women present?