This book is a welcome addition to the study of women and Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea and reminds us of the continued need for exploring the relationship between women and Confucianism—a relationship that has been critically marginalized and vastly oversimplified. The book offers a new, compact study focused on nuanced readings of Confucianism, women's roles and life experiences, and their different engagements with Confucian orthodoxy, with chapters written by authors representing disciplines as varied as history, politics, and literature. Instead of relying on the common framework of Confucian oppression and female victimization, the authors explore the diverse and complicated aspects of Chosŏn women, drawing from various historiographies, official documents, and literary sources, including stories, poems, and diaries.
The book works against traditional, one-dimensional understandings of Chosŏn women's lives and engagement in Confucian society by first locating Confucianism in the natural flow of time and limitation of space—a changing, malleable body consisting of shifting connotations (p. 13). This highlights the plural definitions and interpretations of Confucianism across culture and period, paralleling too the kinetic relationship between women and Confucianism. Youngmin Kim's comparative study of the stories of Yingying (China) and Ch'unhyang (Korea), for example, contrasts the social practice of Confucian virtue in Tang China with that of Chosŏn Korea. The divergent ways in which the conflict between personal desire and Confucian virtue is managed attest to shifting notions of Confucianism. SoonGu Lee's historical survey of the right of ch'ongbu (the eldest daughter-in-law) and the adoption of lineage heirs also reveals the diversity of women's roles in Confucianism of Chosŏn Korea, by showing how the Confucian elite of Chosŏn appropriated and reinterpreted Confucianism to serve their cultural interpretations. As seen from ch'ongbu's right to hold ancient rituals not sanctioned in China, this study shows that the interpretation of the Confucian doctrine in Chosŏn was more flexible than in China (p. 95).
The book also reveals a variety of ways in which Chosŏn women employed Confucian norms to empower themselves. Youngmin Kim's discussion of two female philosophers, Im Yunjidang and Kang Chŏngildang, shows that Confucian learning was utilized by these women as an opportunity to cultivate themselves toward moral perfection, a state transcending gender inequality. Confucian sagehood and social recognition, however, are not limited to this philosophical learning of Confucianism. SoonGu Lee, for example, uses the case study of Lady Chang, a gentry woman in seventeenth-century Chosŏn, to show how the duties of mother, wife, and daughter were ways for women to obtain the highest rewards from society and “ego-realization” (p. 45). The two studies illuminate how women managed to maneuver within the restrictions imposed upon them. This theme is further developed by Michael Pettid's study, which stresses how women's increased internalization and mastery of Confucian teaching and educational texts after the sixteenth century have contributed to expanding their roles and influence in their families and society.
The book acknowledges neglected groups of people, particularly non-elite women, and actively includes them as a way to measure to what extent neo-Confucianism in Late Chosŏn changed women's lives. Ji-Young Jung's study discusses how the spread of the strict patrilineal system of Late Chosŏn affected lower-class women's status, through an examination of Household Register changes and the practice of remarriage. Jung shows the surprisingly limited influence of a strict patrilineal system on lower-status widows whose remarriage rate was, instead, mostly dependent upon their economic and social status. It is also the social and economic function of slavery, suggests Milan Hejtmanek, to which we should attribute changes in the status of female slaves of Late Chosŏn, though the extent to which this added to female empowerment needs further analysis.
Overall, this book provides a rich description of the historical complexity of Chosŏn women, emphasizing their active roles in negotiating with and adapting to the seemingly unprofitable social conditions configured by Confucianism. Yet, perhaps owing to the rarity and extremity of the examples, the studies sometimes offer insufficient analysis, even considering the lack of historical sources. Such underdeveloped arguments reaffirm the fact that the difficult situations of the Chosŏn women cannot be explained without consideration of the influence of neo-Confucianism, an analysis largely missing from this book. The brevity of the chapters may be the main culprit in such underanalysis, but so too is the largely absent critical conversation surrounding this topic, making the book all the more needed.
The contribution of this work is its compelling overarching argument of the insufficiency of the word “Confucianism” to embrace the reality of Chosŏn women, as well as the insufficiency of critical scholarship addressing this relationship. Particularly in that, it is a welcome step forward.
