This article studies various means by which female characters determine their own marriages in the tanci 彈詞, Feng shuang fei 鳳雙飛, authored by a female writer, Cheng Huiying 程蕙英. It centers on case studies of the concubines in the Guo and Zhang families. Zhen Daya, who marries Guo Lingyun, builds an individual identity as a chaste, talented and determined “career woman” through her pursuit of a self-determined marriage. Zhen Xiaoya, Zhang Yishao’s concubine, establishes her subjectivity by following the cult of chastity. By creating such a character, the female writer mocks the conventions of scholar-beauty romances and rethinks the contemporary tradition of romance and marriage. The last case is the author’s strikingly sympathetic treatment of an unchaste girl, Bao Xiang’er. Although the multiple layers of voices all agree that Xiang’er is totally inappropriate and immoral according to traditional Confucian values, she, instead of being punished, still ends up being incorporated into Yishao’s family and is granted a son. These cases allow us to reevaluate Cheng Huiying, a female writer, and her views of women’s autonomy in determining their own marriages. They anticipate, either through fantasy or some level of reality, the concept of “free love” (ziyou lian’ai) so central to the May Fourth conceptions of modern women.