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Women's Relationship to Their Parental Home and Their Husbands' Home in the 18th Century of Chosun Dynasty

  • The Research of the Korean Classic
  • 2009, 0(19), pp.5-30
  • Publisher : The Research Of The Korean Classic
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature > Korean Literature > Korean classic prose

Kyungmi Kim 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper tried to reveal how Sadaebu of the 18th century accepted Chinyoungrye(親迎禮) and how this perception was reflected in women's lives by analyzing records of those days such as haengjang(行狀) which were kind of biographies of Yangban, jemun(祭文), epitaphs inscribed on tombs, and women's autobiographical writings. Focussing on the women's respective relationship to their parental home and their husbands' home, I wanted to show how norms of those days attempted to define women's identity, and how women themselves saw what they were. Scholars who developed the discourse of 예(禮) at those times mentioned that Chinyoungrye was rarely practiced in ordinary lives, and only in the royal family it was followed because of high cost and inconveniences. Generally young couples started their marriage life in brides' parental home. And there were found many cases where only wives kept to live in their parental home. On the other hand, the records which had intended to afford moral lessons to women constructed women's lives focussing only on their husbands' home. Sadaebu tried to discipline women to obey to the will of their in-laws and to make this discipline as a norm for women. Through this study I found that patriarchal system of family based on Jongbub(宗法) was not thoroughly established in the 18th century and two conflicting tendencies co-existed in women's lives. This argument was made based on yangban(兩班), the aristocratic class of those times. Therefore more investigation of individual cases of ordinary lives is needed for more extensive and accurate picture of women's lives in the 18th century.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.