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Opium and Sexuality in Late Qing Fiction
McMahon, Keith
McMahon, Keith
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Abstract
This article examines opium smoking in two gendered contexts of the late Qing,
as an activity among socializing men and in situations between men and women.
The method is to use fiction to ask how male and female smokers differed and in
general to show how opium came to symbolize an uncanny and ominous disrupĀ¬
tion of the social fabric. In terms of gender, the obscene enjoyment of the female
smoker was exponentially more threatening in the prohibitionist's eyes than that
of the male. As the sign of an unprecedented type of pleasure, opium addiction
threatened to denaturalize the boundaries of cultural as well as gender identity.
Description
This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852600750072321.
Date
2000
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Brill Academic Publishers
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Citation
McMahon, Keith. āOpium and Sexuality in Late Qing Fiction,ā in the journal NannĆ¼: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China 2.1 (2000): 129-179. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852600750072321