조선후기 한문소설에 나타난 여성과 가족 서사의 관계

Abstract

This paper investigates the change of the representation the female figures during the 17th century literary history and highlights how they are interrelated with the family construction. In other words, it traces the way in which female figures are narrativized in the late Chosun Dynasty. For this, the paper focalizes those works that have not drawn much scholarly attention precisely because they have the characteristic of highlighting the relationship between parents and children. These works mainly feature the “Hyo” ideology, which, unlike most major works that narrativize the conflicts between women, take generational matters as their subjects. Of course, this narrative edifice can be understood as the disguised masculine project of emphasizing the female character’s ability for harmony. In fact, the power relationship in the traditional family structure is constructed centering on males who can effectively control the socially weak women and children. However, what is interesting is that the power represented in the proses are not directly oppressive or binding. Rather, the pervasive power is manipulative behind the scenes. The facile representation of the womanly harmony as the key to resolution of all the conflicts and incidents has to be read as the result of the operation of the invisible masculine desire and power. Therefore, the common representation and characterization of positive and active female characters are not to be accepted at face value. For the positive female figures are merely illusions that are artificially constructed through censorship and manipulation. This paper is an attempt to read the masculine project that belies under the textual surface. It is necessary to throughly investigate the operational strategies of male power behind the overt theme of female character’s heroic practice of harmonious family relations. Thus this complicated representation of female characters is, in fact, not unrelated to the explosive phenomenon of extramarital affairs during the same period.