조선전기 부처제(婦處制)와 ‘사나운 처’(悍婦)

Abstract

'Hanbu' collectively means 'fierce wives' who existed throughout the entire history of Joseon, but they had different characters according to the different times of the country. As described in 『The True Stories of the Joseon Dynasty』, fierce wives, or 'hanbu' were in the early period of Joseon even more than in the late. And the characters of 'hanbu' were so different between both of the times. 'Hanbu' was so meaningful phenomenon in the women's history of Joseon. Supporting fierce wives who could ignore their husband were the characteristics of the kinship system handed down from the Koryo period to the early Joseon period. Those characteristics included the both-sided kinship system and the matrilocal residence rule according to which men was supposed to live in their wife's home after marriage. However, those systems were not necessarily, but partly related to the fierceness of wives. Since the establishment of the noble rule system in 1392, noble men set out to build up institutions that controlled women's sex and allowed noble men to have multiple sexual relationships with many different women. By the way, the feeling of jealousy that women may have towards such relationships became what noble men were most concerned about. When women expressed that feeling, whether verbally or behaviorally, thus, they were called as 'hanbu' by noble men. ‘The stories of 'hanbu' couldn't be found in literature after the Joseon-Japan and the Joseon-China Wars, or respectively Imjinwaeran and Byeongjahoran. Of course, it doesn't mean that there's not any fierce wife in the reality. Instead, such women decreased remarkably and 'fierce wives' ,if any, weakened surprisingly. These changes are probably attributed to the facts that after the wars as mentioned above, the matrilocal residence rule was replaced by the patrilocal residence rule and, simultaneously, that the hierarchical patrilineal kinship system was established. To control women's fierceness, besides, noble men defined that obedience and submission are the essence of feminity and stressed that no jealousy is an integral part of female ethics. In a similar vein, noble men worked hard to distribute texts like 『Sohak』, 『Yeolnyeojeon』, 『Yeogye』 and 『Yeocheuk』 in order to change women's ways of thinking in a direction that those men wanted. The distribution was not easy at first. The texts could be distributed in earnest in the mid late 17th century when Song Si-yeol put out his writing, 『Wooam Seonsaeng Gyeseonyeo』 whose setting was based on the patrilocal residence rule which provided that women must move to and live at their husband's home after marriage. In conclusion, the cases of fierce wives who were called 'hanbu' were mostly found in the early Joseon period, suggesting that period was when women was superior to men within the context of power relationships.