Women and Neo-Confucianism: Subordinate, Separate, yet Agentic
More so than eras before it, Choson Korea placed intense value on Neo-Confucianism, a philosophical set of values that guided one’s interpersonal life, and dictated how one should act based on their relative social position. Adherents to Neo-Confucianism (of which at least the ruling class were clearly part) interacted differently with their elders than their youngers; they acted differently with those in a higher social class than they did with those in a lower one. Husbands treated their primary wives differently from their secondary ones, who were treated differently than bi concubines. No wife was to treat a husband like a husband was to treat a wife. Neo-Confucianism had quite clear things to say about women: they belonged in a separate, domestic domain. They were supposed to obey their husbands loyally until death; after death, they were not to remarry. It seems unclear to what degree these Neo-Confucian teachings seeped into the minds of commoners, but it is clear that these philosophies deeply affected the lives of bi and yangban women. However, as with most lopsided power dynamics, the victims (much more so the yangban women than the bi) still were allowed agency. Yangban women could pursue education (Pettid); they had limited control over their reputation through court appearances and even through suicide (Kim); or they could simply aspire to create a nice home for future educated men and future dutiful wives to grow up in. Korean women in Neo-Confucian Choson Korea were expected to obey, and separate, but they could still gain respect and agency within those bounds.
In not unclear terms, Neo-Confucianism held that women were subordinate to men. Although one could argue for agency for Choson women (and I will), there was still a clear gender hierarchy with men on top and women below. The writings of Neo-Confucian thinkers of the Choson era support this idea. In the Koryo dynasty, marriages were matrilocal, meaning the man moved into his wife’s family’s home to raise their kids with the wife’s parents. In early Choson Korea, this tradition fell out of favor was replaced by patrilocal marriages; now, the woman moved into her husband’s home to raise their kids among the husband’s family. In justifying this change, Ch’oe Hang, an advisor to Sejong the Great, wrote that there were clear Confucian reasons why matrilocality had no place in the Neo-Confucian system:
“That heaven precedes earth is the principle of hard and soft. That the wife obeys her husband is the principle of yin and yang. Therefore the man makes taking the reins his talent and leads, and the woman makes obedience her task and follows behind…[Currently,] the man enters the woman’s house and thereby confuses the meaning of husband and wife. Yang obeys yin and thereby opposes the principle of heaven and earth. Is there not a deficiency in the codes of this well-ruled time?” (Lee and De Bary, 319)
While it is probably possible to make arguments for patrilocality or matrilocality that don’t involve one gender completely subordinating to the other, this argument is not so neutral. Hang instead writes that patrilocality must be enacted because women belong subordinate to men. Any other living arrangement would involve ruining the Neo-Confucian order (“yang obeys yin”)—such a situation would be as ridiculous as putting the earth before the heavens, Hang argues. Hang goes one step further in writing that a woman’s very “task” is “obedience.” Sin Sukchu, a 15th century thinker and a prime minister, echoed these philosophies, writing that “a wife is loyal and pure, self-controlled, flexible and obedient, and serving others” (Lee and De Bary, 326). In Choson Korea, the top thinkers understood women to lie below men in the Neo-Confucian hierarchy, and their obedience to men was inherent in this.
Though there was a clear gender hierarchy, men were not expected to concern themselves as much with the domestic sphere, where women were expected to excel and demonstrate their worth. Sin Sukchu wrote that a good wife “minds the domestic realm exclusively,” but that within that realm, “the domestic management [is] in her hands. The rise and fall of a house depends on her…she should also be accomplished in female tasks” (Lee and De Bary, 326). Women had the domestic sphere to control, and the stakes were high. The household depended on the women according to Sukchu and in order to be a good Confucian women, there was still a high bar for excellence. The measurement for excellence is what was different, with women only being measured with domestic tasks.
These “female tasks” varied over time. The key female task in Early Choson was chastity. This applied before marriage, during marriage (except with the husband), and even after the husband’s death. Divorce was extremely rare and nearly impossible to initiate as a woman, and remarriage after a husband’s death was looked down upon. Not only was it looked down upon, but it had multigenerational effects, since secondary sons (as sons to a woman’s second marriage were called) could not enter in the civil service, which was the primary way for people to join the upper class (Lecture 01, Theme 04). However, the value of chastity decreased relative to other values after the Manchu and Japanese invasions. The invaders had simply raped too many women for sexual “cleanliness” (as it was usually understood) to remain the principal value for women. Replacing chastity’s large role were other values such as personal education, cooking ability, avoiding envy, and educating your sons and daughters in the Neo-Confucian philosophies (Pettid).
There is significant evidence that Choson women were able to gain agency within these values, not merely by subverting them as one might expect. Agency was not only to be gained from running far away from Neo-Confucian values; sometimes, it was gained by diving head-first into them. In early Choson, women could gain agency through advocating for their own chastity, which they did in courts where they were recognized as worthy legal subjects. They also had the option of committing suicide, which though disappointing to the modern reader, was quite common. While not desirable by any stretch, suicide was often used by women to protest against perceived defamation, or merely to show devotion to your recently passed husband (Kim) (Lecture 02, Theme 04). The posthumous boost to one’s reputation could also have effects on how one’s children were perceived.
After the rape-filled Japanese and Manchu invasions led to a greater diversification of female virtues, these virtues too could be used by the female population to gain agency and respect. The Tale of Lady Pak, roughly a story of a female Choson superhero stopping the Manchu invasions demonstrates this concept of flourishing through perfecting Confucian female values. The story was passed down for generations, and from it we can glean what exactly a female superhero would have looked like in 17th or 18th century Choson Korea. In the story, Lady Pak mostly remains in the domestic sphere but exerts her influence on the world by gaining the trust of important men and advising them expertly. She dresses elegantly and is a master at weaving clothing. Despite her husband’s refusing to sleep with her for years out of disgust, she remains loyal to him. After she transforms into a beautiful woman, they finally sleep together and they raise a large family. Lady Pak is undeniably the star of the tale, saving Choson Korea from Manchu destruction, but she does so in undeniably Neo-Confucian ways, acting out her genius through advising powerful men, raising a large family, and mastering things like making clothes and dressing well. Even after she is thanked and given the title of Lady Victorious, only her descendants are given government positions, not her. In gratitude, she prostrates herself four times (Lady Pak, 99). She was a superhero, but an undeniably Neo-Confucian one.
Neo-Confucianism was a deep and transparent determinant of the way women were treated and the way they were expected to think and live in Choson Korea. In the Neo-Confucian hierarchy, they were placed strictly below their husbands, expected to obey. Within the home, they were perceived to be incredibly important, in control of the direction and success of the household unit, but were really only valued in this setting. Early in the Choson dynasty, one of their few virtues was chastity, which was adjudicated both in courts and in death. Later in the Choson dynasty, other values began to emerge, such as educating the children and cooking well. The Tale of Lady Pak demonstrated the power of these Neo-Confucian female values by showing off a female superhero capable of saving the civilization while staying true to Neo-Confucian conceptions of loyalty, domesticity, and family. It is obvious that women had agency in Neo-Confucian Choson Korea; victims have degrees of agency in almost all oppressions. But in Choson Korea, the agency could be found by leaning into the Neo-Confucian values, not necessarily by avoiding or subverting them.