조선후기 빈곤층 여성의 자매(自賣) 실태

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Self Sale(Jamae, 自賣) of women below the common people in the late Joseon and explores survival skills of women confronting poverty. Poverty always has been a problem. It has always been there since the genesis of human beings, and it is not a problem that only women experience. These are challenges when trying to understand poverty by projecting the concepts of gender and history. Nevertheless, there is another reality of poverty that women experience merely because they are women. This paper analyzes the Self Sale that drastically increased in the late Joseon as focusing on such point. In diverse examples found in chronical materials, law books, and ancient documents, it was found that women chose or were forced by families like parents and brothers to sell themselves to survive. After the Self Sale, these women became others’ concubines or were sold again to other households. Nevertheless, these women made a variety of attempts to improve their lives and to find a better situation. They repeatedly escaped to survive and did not mind leaving their husbands to become others’ concubines. These behaviors slowly made a crack social orders. In conclusion, the reason women in poverty chose the Self Sale was that, most of all, more places required workforce than sex. This makes them different from women in poverty who left home to work in prostitution during the Japanese colonial era. In this aspect, the Self Sale of women is an essential keyword that states the circumstances of women in the late Joseon.