While footbinding may have begun as an innovation of the palace dancer, its diffusion in the Southern Sung was facilitated because it came to be regarded philosophically as a device for the suppression of women:
DETAILED DRAWING OF A TINY SHOE, NORTHERN STYLE, POPULAR IN THE EARLY 1920’S
A. Temple Gate; also called Moon Gate.
B. Ladder rungs.
C. Bound foot surface; also called aperture
D. Aperture point.
E. Front sole support.
F. Border strip.
G. Middle joint.
H. Center of the sole.
I. Rear sole support.
J. Perfume storage, surface.
K. Inner high heel.
L. Heel lift.
M. Heel lift reinforcement.
N. Shoe fastener.
(from Tsai-Fei Lu (TFL) 1.225-26)
During the Sung dynasty, there was a change in masculine viewpoints, with a gradual shift away from the liberal attitudes towards chastity and remarriage which had characterized the T’ang. Women of the T’ang remarried fairly frequently, either after divorce from or death of the first husband. There were often two and sometimes three recorded marriages of women in the imperial clan. T’ang courtesans wrote direct and frank revelations of their feelings in verse, showing that their intellectual development was unhindered. While remarriage in the Sung was still commonplace, several noted thinkers took a dim view of feminine liberty and intellectual freedom, laying the groundwork for the belief that a woman of virtue should be a conventional lady of little talent. The eleventh-century historian Ssu-ma Kuang felt it advisable to let women read proper classical works, but disapproved of their learning to sing or write poetry. It was considered a disadvantage to over-educate women. Ssu-ma Kuang likened the husband to heaven on high and the wife to the lowly earth below and emphasized that woman should be docile and not contentious. To him, a woman’s proper place was obviously within the confines of the home. Similar views had been propounded towards the end of the T’ang. However, Ssu-ma Kuang’s ideas were later reinforced by the Sung philosopher Chu Hsi (1130-1200). Chu Hsi strongly supported the view that a woman should preserve chastity after her husband’s death, that it was better for her to starve than remarry. His motives in enthusiastically introducing footbinding into southern Fukien were that it offered “a means of spreading Chinese culture and teaching the separation of men and women.”
Chu Hsi, who served as governor in Chang Prefecture, Fukien, was said to have noted that women there tended to be unchaste and to indulge in lewdness. He therefore ordered that all women’s feet be bound to an excessive degree, causing them to be hampered in moving about. He relied on this to change their immoral habits, we are told. These Fukienese women had such tightly compressed feet that they could get about only by leaning on canes; whenever they attended local celebrations or funerals, such gatherings were called “A Forest of Canes.” Their bound feet were smaller than the norm; this was attributed to the desire to prevent them from eloping. Until the modern age, the Chinese thought of footbinding in terms of restriction. This is shown by the dialogue of a late-nineteenth-century play, in which one actor declared that the purpose of footbinding was to control women so they couldn’t wander about lewdly and as they pleased. An unanswered question was then posed as to whether there were shameless women in the world because they were uninstructed or because they had never bound their feet. Twentieth-century matchmakers in southwestern Fukien were described as reluctant to arrange a marriage between a widow and a young bachelor, believing that it would bring the man bad luck.
As we have seen, the custom of footbinding probably originated toward the end of the T’ang dynasty or in the decades which immediately followed. It was limited at first to a palace innovation practiced by trained dancers, whose feet must have been only moderately compressed. By the twelfth century it had become accepted throughout the imperial palace. From then on, its impact as a hallmark of gentility and correct fashion was felt increasingly by the upper class. It also helped to ensure that a woman remain in her proper place—at home. It was so inconvenient for the bound-footed to get about that her chances for indulging sexually as did the Chinese male were greatly lessened. Footbinding proved to be a significant and lasting development in a nation whose outlook on feminine morality became increasingly stringent. This philosophical outlook was reinforced in the centuries which followed the Sung. That the tiny foot came to be considered a mark of gentility was equally significant. From the Yuan dynasty onward, families which claimed aristocratic lineage came to feel compelled to bind the feet of their girls, with utmost severity and diligence, as a visible sign of upper-class distinction. An ideal of conspicuous leisure required diminutive feet and hands as well as a slender waist, for these features indicated that the person affected was incapable of useful effort and had to be supported in idleness by her owner. Veblen used this argument to explain why the deformed foot of the Chinese woman enjoyed such a wide and persistent vogue. The fact that the foot was bound to the smallest and a virtually incapacitating degree as one reached the heights of the social scale, and that upper-class Korean and Manchu ladies under Chinese influence also strove to achieve feet smaller than the norm, is further evidence that it was a distinguishing mark which set the aristocratic lady apart from the plebeian class.
A Yuan dynasty treatise further justified footbinding because it guaranteed feminine chastity. A Chinese manual for instructing women similarly pointed out that the purpose in binding feet was not to make them more attractive, but to prevent women from easily being able to leave their quarters.
Footbinding was not yet commonplace during the Sung, even among the upper class who would have been first to imitate the palace style. The famed poetess Li Ch’ing-chao (born 1080), for example, touched on numerous subjects in her poems but never mentioned binding. In one line she wrote of having once walked barefoot through the snow, proof that she was never personally exposed to the practice. During the Sung, binding was unknown in Kwangsi and Annam. It probably was rare in the southern areas of Kwangtung, Kiangsu, and Chekiang, for there were poems about women in these localities going about in bare feet. Su Tung-p’o (1036-1101), who also referred poetically to natural feet, wrote one of the earliest verses in praise of footbinding: