郭嵩燾의 <<繪圖宣講集要>>에 나타난 淸末의 女性像

Abstract

Studies on the social status of women in Chinese families abound. Most of the works were focused on virtues of women in late imperial period, and the materials refered to were gazetteers, genealogies, novels and private anthologies. As Patricia Ebrey indicated, customes, practices, ideas, and sentiments related to family change. The close connection of family life to religious beliefs, to primary economic activities of production and consumption, and to social organization at the local level means that changes or variations of any of these might well show up in transmuted form as variations in family life and customs. As a result, if we want to analyze families in a certain period, it would be needed to select corresponding, appropriate historical sources to examine past families. I think that Xuanjiang jiyao (宣講集要 Collection of Examples for Reciting and Expounding the Sacred Edicts), to some extent, serves the need. But, comparing images on Chinese women in late Qing period depicted here, with those of more former times, is another problem. Besides genealogies and gazetteers, the sources that survive in abundance and provide us with information on the popular lives in countries, should be found. As such materials, generally, were works written by the intellectuals, and so imbued with their perspectives, it will be needed to develop our own perspectives to restore the popular lives. In the lineage-centered society, women were able to gradually gain strength of position by starting a family after childbirth (especially giving birth to sons). Family elders were always preoccupied with wives' influence on dividing the stove. This idea caused to feel keenly the necessity of edifying wives and daughters and emphasizing the morality as women. Futhermore, the social control of women was also justified. I illuminated to some extent, the control on women within a family or lineage in late imperial China, although the entire picture is not very clear. Studies on the relation between the tension caused on the idea of cohabitation of many generations in a large family by wives and contemporary social and economic aspects, should be performed.