Although premodern East Asian women are understood as suffered and victimized
figures under the realm of Confucianism, our panel would like to examine premodern
Korean writings to investigate how women subjected themselves under Confucianism
as writers, readers, and consumers.
Janet Lee attempts to unravel a
more complex and multi-phased exploration of the theme of forbidden love in
pre-modern Korean fiction and analyze changing notions of love in Korean literature
as these relate to feminist studies. Based on reading of various poems and
letters, how the characters conceptualize both “wooing” and “love-making” will
be discussed.
Youme Kim wants to argue that readers can recognize the value of the voice
of women through the stories, even though women are valued through the lens
of literati and described as an example of faithfulness, a Confucian virtue
for women. For example, in the biographies of faithful women, women express
love to their family members, sorrow in the faith of women, willingness to live,
agony and hesitation before suicide, conflicts between family members, and even
anger and resistance to the circumstances that force them to be faithful women.
Hwa Yeong Wang tried to see how
Neo-Confucianism can function as a tool for emancipation, not only for subjection
of women, by investigating the Im Yunjidang’s
posthumous book, Yunjidang Yugo. She studied, voiced, and wrote on Neo-Confucianism
that was prohibited to women. She believed that a woman could be a Confucian
sage and this view can be justified by neo-Confucianism itself.
Seung-Ah Lee focuses on female hero
fictions in which we often see the reverse of gender roles with women being
masculine and superior to men. For this reason, many Korean studies scholars
argue that heroine’s gender inversion can
be seen as subversion of sexuality. By a close reading of Hong Kyewol chon (“Tale
of Hong Kyewol”), it will be discussed whether gender inversion can be
understood as subversion.
Considering the limited nature of materials about premodern Korean literature
in the West, it would be a great opportunity for us to present papers about
them.
Seung-Ah Lee, University of California, Los Angeles
After two major foreign invasions by the Japanese and Manchu in the 16th
and 17th centuries, hero fiction earned great popularity in the late
Choson period. People who suffered during the war wanted a hero who was
able to save them, a need that was fulfilled vicariously through hero fiction.
Among these hero fictions, female hero fiction was widely read as well.
According to Martina Deuchler, Confucianizing Choson society was a process
that gradually spread out to commoners, making Choson society a patrilineal
society, something that Deuchler sees as a major discrepancy between
Koryo and Choson society. If Deuchler is right, how should we interpret
the emergence and popularity of the female hero fiction?
In these female hero fictions, we often see the reverse of gender roles,
with women being masculine and superior to men. For this reason, many
Korean studies scholars argue that heroine’s gender inversion can be seen
as subversion of sexuality. However, I believe that, curiously, no aspect
of heroine’s gender inversion is presented as subversive. For instance,
despite the fact that Hong Kyewol’s (“Tale of Hong Kyewol”)
appropriation of a masculine role breaks many of the taboos for female behavior
by exposing herself to public view and killing her husband’s beloved
concubine, all this is excused within the logic of the narrative because
it is motivated by her Confucian morality. Hong Kyewol is the most successful
and unambiguous model of activist Confucianism in fiction.
Then, how do we understand the gender inversion of the heroine? Otani
Morishige argues that in late Choson, the majority of popular fiction
readers were women; the demand for writing, especially that written in
Korean, rose sharply after the seventeenth century, and at the heart
of this increasing demand for fiction consumption were upper-class women
readers. If, as Frederic Jameson has argued in The Political Unconscious,
narratives are “socially
symbolic acts”, works of popular fiction may be seen as texts that
represent an “individual parole or utterance” of “collective
and class discourses”, since popular works of fiction simultaneously
represent perspectives of writers and readers. In this sense, I suggest
the women readers’ perspectives are strongly represented in female
hero fictions.
Youme Kim, University of California, Los Angeles
The biographies of faithful women deal with women who kept their faith
after their husbands’ death by killing themselves or living under
extremely hard conditions without doing second marriages. In the Choson
period, literati had the privilege of getting a formal education and
enjoying literary activities in literary Chinese. While the members were
writers and also subjects of literary works including biographies for
a long time, women were, however, excluded from formal education and
also rarely the subjects of literary works. In a patriarchic society,
women have significance as a wife and mother and their voices are strictly
suppressed. When women lose their husband or sons, they are economically
weak and easily fall under suspicion on their chastity. In the midst
of difficulties, some women who kept their chastity under hard living
conditions are regarded as heroines and become serious subjects of formal
literary works. These stories were written under the influence of stories
of faithful women, but they were written in large numbers and established
their unique style from the Choson period, especially after two invasions
from Japan and Manchu.
Previous studies show that the biographies of faithful women lacks literary
value because of their simple and formal writing style. Also, the studies
argue that the stories do not reflect real lives of women because male
writers only focus on revealing Confucian morality about women. However,
readers can recognize the value of the voice of women through the stories,
even though, women are valued through the lens of literati and described
as an example of faithfulness, a Confucian virtue for women. For example,
they express love to their family members, sorrow in the faith of women,
willingness to live, agony and hesitation before suicide, conflicts between
family members, and even anger and resistance to the circumstances that
force them to be faithful women. Also, according to writers, there are
different views of what faithfulness is and how it can be achieved. This
study examines how faithful women are defined and described by male writers
and the women’s
identity as human beings in the late Choson society. With comparing to the
stories of faithful women in China and Korea, this work helps to understand
Korean women’s life and identity described in the literary works.
Hwa Yeong Wang, Sungkyunkwan University
Until recently it was believed that women in pre-modern Korea were suppressed
and Confucianism provided the fundamental ideology for that. It can be
said that Neo-Confucianism, as an ideological system, is patrilineal
and clan-centered. As Confucian transformation of Korea made progress
during 17th-18th centuries, male-centered view encroached various social
systems, customs, family relations, etc. In the late Choson, women had
been restricted within inner space without freedom or rights in private
or official spheres.
However, there is a contradictive perspective. Confucianism also functioned
as an ideology or at least as a hope for liberation of women. We can
find a clue in the life and writings of Im Yunjidang (1721-1793), the
first woman neo-Confucian scholar of Korea. Throughout her posthumous
book, Yunjidang Yugo, it is obvious that she was a typical yangban woman
who led a life educated and approved by family and society. However,
she studied, voiced, and wrote on neo-Confucianism, which was prohibited
to women. She believed that a woman can be a Confucian sage, and this
view can be justified by neo-Confucianism itself. Here, neo-Confucianism
can function as a tool for emancipation, not only for subjection, of
women.
This paper aims to present an opposing opinion against existing view,
asserts Confucianism as a mechanism of suppression of women, arguing
that neo-Confucianism could offer a hope for liberation of women in the
late Choson period.
Janet Lee, University of California, Los Angeles
This research attempts to unravel a more complex and multi-phased exploration
of the theme of forbidden love in pre-modern Korean fiction and analyze
changing notions of love in Korean literature as these relate to feminist
studies. This paper examines the language of love, through which characters
construct their amorous relationships and express their emotions. Based
on my reading of various poems and letters, I will discuss how the characters
conceptualize both “wooing” and “love-making.” To
define “courtship” itself as a literary device in Korean romance,
I propose to undertake an analysis of “Chusaeng chôn” (The
Tale of Student Chu), by Kwôn P’il (1569-1612). Although this
story presents ideal models of wisdom and virtue, it struggles to find
the middle ground between sexuality and chastity, passion and moral responsibility,
individualism and family. In discussing how the female character could
have shifted from that of a one-dimensional object to that of a multi-faceted
subject, I will reveal how the female characters justify their amorous
passion, even while employing Confucian womanly virtues. Korean traditional
romances in literary Chinese were written by males, who had a strong
urge to legitimate both the aesthetic and the didactic aspect of love
stories. In light of this situation, it is difficult to ferret out the
space wherein women struggled and reinterpreted the symbols and codes
as a means to fulfill their latent desire; nonetheless, I will address
how the silence and virtuous talk introduced by female characters offer
subversive notions of the male-subject discourse.
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