Iron Widow

Iron Widow is a loose re-imagining of the life and rise to power of the historical Wu Zetian, who ruled as China’s only legitimate female empress from 690 CE to 705 CE. It is commonly accepted that prior to openly ruling, she was the real power behind her husband, the Emperor Gaozong of Tang, a fact that technically extends her rule from 665 CE to 705 CE. Empress Wu was educated by her father, despite tradition forbidding women from receiving education. Empress Wu survived a cutthroat harem system where she had to compete with other concubines and wives for the Emperor’s favor; once situated in her power, she had her rivals in the harem killed, exiled, or otherwise disgraced. Throughout her reign, Wu continued to show the same cunning ruthlessness, often turning to violence, murder, and exile to legitimize her position in the court.

The Wu Zetian of Iron Widow is tangentially inspired by the historical figure’s rise to power in a male-dominated ruling class. Some small elements of Empress Wu’s life are also present, such as having a lover named Yizhi. Empress Wu had many lovers, and the characters of Yizhi and Shimin are actually amalgamations of historical names and people, reflecting Zhao’s detailed knowledge of the original history, although the author does take several anachronistic liberties. For example, foot binding, the practice of forcibly breaking and shaping women’s feet into smaller shapes to restrict their movement and appeal to men, did not begin until the 10th century, several centuries after Empress Wu’s death. The misogynistic culture that Zetian navigates in the novel is an allusion to the real-life philosophies of Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism (a revival that flourished in the Song Dynasty alongside foot binding). Confucianism argued for a yin and yang understanding of women and men that is reflected in the gender dynamics of Huaxia.

The disparate elements of Chinese culture and history present in Iron Widow did not all occur alongside one another at the same time in history. Zhao’s amalgamation of various practices of misogyny in Chinese history is a rhetorical technique to build a gender-based dystopia. This approach allows Zhao to explore a worst-case scenario of a misogynistic world that offers commentary on our present-day issues of misogyny and sexism through the perspective of a protagonist who is subjected to the worst aspects of misogyny in an exaggerated world. The historical elements of Empress Wu and the conglomeration of past cultures allow Zhao to achieve this exaggeration.