As for the internal and personal reasons that led women to write poetry, they were as diverse as the lives of these authors. Some critics tried to determine the essence of women's poetry, and related it to the secluded and idle lifestyle many of them had.
"Not burdened with the hustle and bustle of business and travel, with nothing but green moss and fragrant trees around her dwelling, and no other work than tying curtains and burning incense, a woman is in touch with peace and elegance,’ “explained 16th century male critic Zhong Xing, "Men must travel to all the corners of the earth in order to know the world. But women never have to do that. They have country villages right on their pillows, and mountains passes in their dreams, all because they are so pure. Alas!How far do men, with their skillfulness, fall behind women!"
By praising the idleness and purity of women as a source of creativity, Zhong contributes to confining women's poetry into a genre dealing merely with the expression of delicate inner feelings—such as love or melancholy—and the expression of nature's beauty.
However, women poets came from all walks of life, and each wrote with her own aspiration and style. Some of them even introduced new poetic forms in an art defined by strict codes and conventions. Chinese poetry is an art of regularity. Writers composed using set poetic forms which determined—among others—how many characters there were in each line.
