This study explores strengthening aspects of the women’s fidelity ideology in the adaptation process from Run to Earth to An Abandoned Canoe and to A Virtuous Wife’s Grudge. Lee Sanghyup’s A Virtuous Wife’s Grudge has been considered to be the first adapted novel with the translatorship. This novel was translated from its Japanese source text, An Abandoned Canoe, using a word for word approach. Until now, most of the studies about A Virtuous Wife’s Grudge have been confined to studies on the Korean text itself, or on its relationship to Japanese original. This study enlarges the radius of present researches on Run to Earth, the original text of An Abandoned Canoe, to find the differences regarding women’s fidelity ideology generated or rewritten in the adaptation process.
This article found that fidelity ideology is strengthened through the course of the two adaptations. We investigated its strengthening aspects related to the changes of the structure and the main female characters. At first, structurally, the one-top structure of the British original text centered on Honoria’s independence changes into the two-top structure, where the male characters—including the biological father, the step father, and the husband—affect the female main character’s fate and life. Secondly, Honoria, the main female character, who is explained as a heroic, independent, tenacious, and ambivalent person in the orignal novel, changes into Sonoe and Junghae, who are homely as well as faithful to their husband.