조선후기 양반 여성의 질병과 죽음에 대한 사례 연구 - 『18세기 여성생활사 자료집』을 중심으로 -

Abstract

What were the health conditions of women in the Joseon period? This seemingly simple question has not been given much attention by researchers. As such this paper is a preliminary inquiry into the health and illness of yangban women in 18th century Joseon in order to analyze the social context of women’s lives in relation to health. In order to overcome the great limitation of resources dealing with women’s health during the time when records made by women themselves were rare, this paper uses Resource Materials on the Everyday Life History of 18th Century Women translated by contemporary women’s literature and history researchers (hereafter, Resource Materials) and analyzes the sources related to bijijeonjang (碑誌傳狀), or biographies, records of the deceased, epitaphs, funeral orations, and memorial inscriptions. Although the records of women’s lives are written by men, a close reading of these records sheds light on the social context of women’s lives related to health and illness. Among 1,000 or so records found in the Resource Materials, the paper focuses on 63 cases of records of women which were all written by their husbands. The paper attempts to reconstruct the everyday lives of 18th century yangban women by examining the resources related to average life span, marriage age, and number of children while specifically investigating what kind of illnesses women suffered from and the main causes of their death. In addition, this paper seeks to analyze the context between the illness that became the main cause of death and the lives of women who embodied Confucian norms. In other words, this paper seeks to reconstruct 18th century yangban women’s lives from the point of view of health and illness by analyzing how the social pressure on women to bear a son to pass down the family legacy impacted women’s very health and life. Furthermore, this paper aims to illuminate little known aspects of women’s health and illness in the 18th century through examining a number of cases studies and finding out who cared for sick yangban women at a time when individual health greatly depended on the quality of care undertaken by the family or society. and how are the husbands who lived longer related to women’s health.