18세기 동아시아의 性(gender) 정치학 ― 『欽欽新書』의 배우자 살해사건을 중심으로

Abstract

In this paper, I speculate how gender politics was exercised in eighteenth-century East Asia by examining spouse-killing cases contained in Dasan Jeong Yagyong's Heumhuem sinseo or A New Book on Criminal Law. Most homicide cases contained under the title of "Hangryeo ji jang" are wife-killing cases in which the perpetrators were the victims' husbands, even though the title means "homicides caused by quarrels between husband and wife." 18 cases of extreme family violence are assorted into the same title in the chapter of "Euyul charye" in which eighteenth-century Chinese cases are introduced, while 12 Korean cases are juxtaposed with them in the chapter of "Sanghyeong chueui" in which most cases were reviewed by King Jeongjo. Such rare attempts in juxtaposing Korean criminal cases with Chinese ones made by Dasan enable us to examine gender politics from a broader spectrum of East Asian history, even though we would better understand thoroughly the author's intention and his perspectives penetrating the whole book before looking into those specific cases. These case records show that what ultimately concerned Confucian jurists such as Dasan or the state was to maintain Confucian gender order. In these cases we would find the internalization of Confucian gender discourses in eighteenth-century Chinese and Korean societies, while there were subtle differences between Chinese and Korean law enforcement. However, what was commonly found in eighteenth-century wife-killing case records is that the state would not try to justify the female victim's sacrifice by tolerating the patriarch's violence beyond the limit of the law. What concerned the state most in these cases was not to defend the patriarch's violence but rather to conceal the failure of patriarchal authority and prevent the family order from collapsing.