{"id":18672,"date":"2026-04-19T10:39:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T17:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/?p=18672"},"modified":"2026-04-19T10:39:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T17:39:48","slug":"irje-9-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/irje-9-3\/","title":{"rendered":"IRJE #9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished reading <em>Lady Tan&#8217;s Circle of Women<\/em> by Lisa See. It is a historical novel that centers around Tan Yunxian, who is a real historical figure who becomes a female physician during the 15th century <span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Ming dynasty in China despite strict rules limiting women\u2019s lives back then<\/span><\/span>. Despite this, Tan Yunxian finds a path into medicine through her grandmother, who teaches her healing practices. It focuses on her lifelong friendships and how women support each other while facing restrictions.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Respectful Lady asks me to repeat the rules we&#8217;ve covered, \u201cWhen walking, don\u2019t turn my head\u2026 When talking, don\u2019t open my mouth wide. When standing, don\u2019t rustle my skirts. When happy, don\u2019t rejoice with loud laughter. When angry, never raise my voice.\u201d\u00a0 (p.18)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the book Respectful lady is Yunxian\u2019s teacher who teaches her the rules of how a proper woman should act in elite society. I chose this quote because it clearly shows how strict the rules were for women back then. How women shouldn\u2019t laugh loudly or even move in a noticeable way. This is important to the story because it helps us understand the kind of life Yunxian is expected to live. But she rejects it because later on she becomes a doctor and goes against these rules. This shows how she grows as a character despite the challenges and expectations set on her and becomes stronger by not always following what society expects of her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished reading Lady Tan&#8217;s Circle of Women by Lisa See. It is a historical novel that centers around Tan Yunxian, who is a real historical figure who becomes a female physician during the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-independent-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18678,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18672\/revisions\/18678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}