조선후기, ‘계녀(戒女)’의 역설: 아버지가 딸을 위해 쓴 제문의 행간 읽기

Abstract

The elite men in the late Chosŏn period left commemorative writings about their deceased female family members. Not only do commemorative writings praise the deceased, but they also evaluate their lives according to the Confucian norms. This study examines the commemorative writings for the deceased daughters to reveal the tension between the Confucian norms established by the elite men and their failure to adhere to them when they are grieving for their deceased daughters. Mostly, the daughter about whom a commemorative writing was written by her father had been married before death. The father-author would be conscious of his daughter’s in-laws and write about how virtuously she had lived as a married woman and how much she was praised by her parents-in-law. However, in the process of expressing the affection, sadness, and grief for his deceased daughter, many authors reveal their innermost feelings that deviate from the Confucian norms. When it is mentioned that she was never lazy during her life at her husband’s home, it is usually a compliment. Yet, the father points out that it was the reason she fell ill. The commemorative writings about the daughters who committed suicide after their husbands’ death are usually just short notes either with resignation or of reproval. Some of the fathers moved his daughter’s mortuary tablet so that her soul rested by her parents, some moved the grave to be near her, some began to believe in the Buddhist doctrine of samsara, and some others even brought in the Taoist discourse of the “dream of Chang Tzu.” On the one hand, the elite men in Chosŏn taught their daughters that she should, once married, belong to her husband’s family and praised her if she was a good daughter-in-law. On the other hand, however, they would get almost obsessed, in their grief, to keep their beloved daughters by their side. Even though they had established the norms of women’s virtue in accordance with the Confucian ideology, they could not apply it to their daughters without faltering. This study intends to read between the lines of the commemorative writings about the deceased daughters. In the process of praising and grieving their deceased daughters, the authors reveal their innermost feelings, making their commemorative writings a paradoxical realm in which the norms they established themselves are contradicted by their personal affection for their own daughters.