Negotiating virtue and the lives of women in late Choso n Korea

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This dissertation explores the actual lives of women from the eighteenth century to the end of the Choso n dynasty, by examining the ideology, practice, and societal impact of chastity culture, one of the most distinct aspects of the late Choso n. It challenges the present scholarship on Choso n women, which has probed into the roles and discourse of elite women at the expense of their more numerous non-elite counterparts. It also questions the general assumption that the concept of chastity became increasingly popularized into the ring of lower-strata women in the latter half of the Choso n period, with the steady reinforcement of Neo-Confucian rituals from the seventeenth century on. Based on analysis of more than five hundred ko m'an cases, the legal testimonies on various homicides and female suicides, I have discovered myriad sexual and familial practices existing outside of Neo-Confucian archetypal marriage patterns, especially among the non-elite population. Paying special attention to the interplay of ideas and practices about chastity among the state, local community, family, and individual, I conclude that women's chastity during the Choso n dynasty was neither a rigid ideology nor an exclusively female experience, but was often used in diverse ways in everyday power struggles involving both women and men. I argue that no matter how strong normative expectations of womanly conduct were in the late Choso n period, the ideal of chastity interacted with and was critically determined by women's sense of identity and by their socio-economic position. Therefore, this study reconsiders chastity culture as powerful evidence in assessing Neo-Confucianization in Choso n society by problematizing the actual perception and practice of chastity among ordinary people.