<춘향전>에서의 법(法)과 사랑

Abstract

From the point of view of the law and public morals in Yi-dynasty, it is possible to discover new meanings in the love of Chunhyang and Mongryong-Lee, the conflicts between Chunhyang and Hakdo-Byeon, and the rescue of Chunhyang by Mongryong-Lee as a secret royal inspector. First, although the love of Chunhyang and Mongryong-Lee was against the law and public morals of Yi-dynasty, the narrator did not call to account, but he described the love as a romantic and new one conflicting with the ruling system. And it was an unprecedented case that Chunhyang asked a written contract as a legal guarantee for marriage when Mongryong-Lee courted her. Second, Hakdo-Byeon, the Namwon county governor, accused Chunhyang, a female entertainer of the Namwon county, of disobedience to his oder and contempt of him, and interrogated her with torture when she denied his demand for bed service which was prohibited by law. Chunhyang refuted against him and regarded his demand for bed service as the rape of a married woman. In this process, narrator sharply contrasted Chunhyang’s claim for human rights with Hakdo-Byeon’s legal administration. Characters such as people of Namwon county and king did not call Mongryong-Lee to account for that he, as a secret royal inspector, allegedly used his power privately to rescue his sweetheart Chunhyang from Hakdo-Byeon’s illegal oppression. These different judgements on legal administrations of Hakdo-Byeon and Mongryong-Lee came from the legal emotion of characters and reading publics of <Chunhyang-jeon>. Namely, people who sympathized with Chunhyang’s claim for love and human rights had the legal emotion that Mongryong-Lee’s administrative order suspending Hakdo-Byeon’s govenor’s status could be approved as an legal and exciting one. Therefore the love of Chunhyang and Mongryong-Lee implied a new legal emotion which based on the sympathy with Chunhyang’s human rights consciousness, and regarded the positive law of Yi – dynasty as one behind times.