Women beware women: Zhang Yimou's 'Raise the Red Lantern'

Certainly in the world of this film, women need to beware women, to paraphrase the title of Thomas Middleton's 1657 tragedy, and it is not altogether inapt to reference this Jacobean work in which women behave treacherously towards each other with tragic results. However, the title of this essay really should have gone on to read (clumsily): 'Women Beware Women, but watch out for men too', for the precarious situations faced by women in this film and the society it depicts are the result of a traditional patriarchal dominance.