本书中何伟亚开宗明义地表述了他不是在提供一种中国历史研究的新模式，也不是在提供替代传统冲突论的描述方式，而是尝试对“马嘎尔尼使华”事件进行重新审视。传统上人们偏爱把“马嘎尔尼使华”解释为不同文明间的碰撞，如现代文明与传统文明、工业文明与农业文明、资本主义与封建主义等等。而何伟亚正好试图说明，中英两国在这一事件中的矛盾和冲突并不是文化或文明之间的冲突，而是两大帝国构建之间的冲突。

The Ming–Qing dynastic transition in seventeenth-century China was an epochal event that reverberated in Qing writings and beyond; political disorder was bound up with vibrant literary and cultural production. Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature focuses on the discursive and imaginative space commanded by women. Encompassing writings by women and by men writing in a feminine voice or assuming a female identity, as well as writings that turn women into a signifier through which authors convey their lamentation, nostalgia, or moral questions for the fallen Ming, the book delves into the mentality of those who remembered or reflected on the dynastic transition, as well as those who reinvented its significance in later periods. It shows how history and literature intersect, how conceptions of gender mediate the experience and expression of political disorder.
Why and how are variations on themes related to gender boundaries, female virtues, vices, agency, and ethical dilemmas used to allegorize national destiny? In pursuing answers to these questions, Wai-yee Li explores how this multivalent presence of women in different genres provides a window into the emotional and psychological turmoil of the Ming-Qing transition and of subsequent moments of national trauma.