Immortalising the premature death

Focusing on three cases of deifying unmarried daughters, this chapter explores a historical dark event of immortalising the premature death of talented virgins in late imperial China. The cult of talented daughters is characterised by its emphasis on female virginity and talent, its association with the gentry community’s literary construction and religious performances, and its marginalisation from, and supplements to, the orthodox Confucian mourning system. The development of the cult was influenced by and exhibits characteristics of the complex socio-cultural ecology of Ming-Qing China, which includes the growing concern about women’s education and writings, the shaping of a sentiment-oriented familial bond, and the confluence of different religions. This chapter introduces the cult of immortalising talented daughters in Ming-Qing China to a larger audience and explores how it complicated the relationship between mourning policies and practices in historical China. It discusses how gender, writing, ritual, and religion engaged in the discourse of death to express the living’s anxiety over ‘unrecognized death’ within the mourning system. In doing so, the chapter reconsiders the concept of dark events in a historical and non-Western context.