SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN
Mou-chin Tai is a beautifully situated village, and has something
of a look of comfort. Up to that point small boats can come up at
all seasons, but there is almost no trade. The Tai-döng expands into
a broad sheet of water, on which the hills descend abruptly. There
is a ferry, and we drove our ponies into the ferryboat and yelled
for the ferryman. After a time he appeared on the top of the bank,
but absolutely declined to take us over “for any money.” He would
have “nothing so do with a foreigner,” he said, and he would not be
“implicated with a Japanese”! So we put ourselves across, and the
_mapu_ were so angry that they threw his poles into the river.
Passing through very pretty country, and twice crossing the Tai-döng,
we halted at the town of Sun-chhön, a magistracy with a deplorably
ruinous _yamen_. All these official buildings have seen better days.
Their courts are spacious, and the double-roofed gateways, with their
drum towers, as well as the central hall of the _yamen_, still retain
a certain look of stateliness, though paint, lacquer, and gilding have
long ago disappeared from the elaborately arranged beams and carved
wood of the roofs, and the fretwork screening the interiors is always
shabby and broken.
About the Sun-chhön _yamen_, and all others, there are crowds of
“runners,” writers, soldiers in coarse ragged uniforms, young men of
the _yang-ban_ class in spotless white garments, lounging, or walking
with the swinging gait befitting their position, while the decayed
and forlorn rooms in the courtyard are filled with petty officials,
smoking long pipes and playing cards. To judge from the crowds of
attendants, the walking hither and thither, the hurrying in various
directions with manuscripts, and the din of drums and fifes when the
great gate is opened and closed, one would think that nothing less than
the business of an empire was transacted within the ruinous portals.
Soldiers, writers, _yamen_ runners, and men of the _yang-ban_ and
literary classes combined with the loafers of the town to compose a
crowd which by its buzzing and shouting, and tearing off the paper from
my latticed door, gave me a fatiguing and hideous two hours, a Korean
crowd being only _un_bearable when it is led by men of the literary
class, who, as in China, indulge in every sort of vulgar impertinence.
Eventually I was smuggled into the women’s apartments, where I was
victimized in other ways by insatiable curiosity.
The women of the lower classes in Korea are ill-bred and unmannerly,
far removed from the gracefulness of the same class in Japan or the
reticence and kindliness of the Chinese peasant women. Their clothing
is extremely dirty, as if the men had a monopoly of their ceaseless
laundry work, which everywhere goes on far into the night. Every
brookside has its laundresses squatting on flat stones, dipping the
soiled clothes in the water, laying them on flat stones in tightly
rolled bundles and beating them with flat paddles, a previous process
consisting of steeping them in a ley made of wood ashes. Bleached
under the brilliant sun and very slightly glazed with rice starch,
after being beaten for a length of time with short quick taps on a
wooden roller with club-shaped “laundry sticks,” common white cotton
looks like dull white satin, and has a dazzling whiteness which
always reminds me of St. Mark’s words concerning the raiment at the
Transfiguration, “so as no fuller on earth can white them.” This
wearing of white clothes, and especially of white wadded clothes in
winter, entails very severe and incessant labor on the women. The coats
have to be unpicked and put together again each time that they are
washed, and though some of the long seams are often joined with paste,
there is still much sewing to be done.
Besides this the Korean peasant woman makes all the clothing of the
household, does all the cooking, husks and cleans rice with a heavy
pestle and mortar, carries heavy loads to market on her head, draws
water, in remote districts works in the fields, rises early and takes
rest late, spins and weaves, and as a rule has many children, who are
not weaned till the age of three.
The peasant woman may be said to have no pleasures. She is nothing
but a drudge, till she can transfer some of the drudgery to her
daughter-in-law. At thirty she looks fifty, and at forty is frequently
toothless. Even the love of personal adornment fades out of her life
at a very early age. Beyond the daily routine of life it is probable
that her thoughts never stray except to the dæmons, who are supposed to
people earth and air, and whom it is her special duty to propitiate.
It is really difficult to form a general estimate of the position of
women in Korea. Absolute seclusion is the inflexible rule among the
upper classes. The ladies have their own courtyards and apartments,
towards which no windows from the men’s apartments must look. No
allusion must be made by a visitor to the females of the household.
Inquiries after their health would be a gross breach of etiquette, and
politeness requires that they should not be supposed to exist. Women do
not receive any intellectual training, and in every class are regarded
as beings of a very inferior order. Nature having in the estimation
of the Korean man, who holds a sort of dual philosophy, marked woman
as his inferior, the _Youth’s Primer_, _Historical Summaries_, and
the _Little Learning_ impress this view upon him in the schools, and
as he begins to mix with men this estimate of women receives daily
corroboration.
The seclusion of women was introduced five centuries ago by the present
dynasty, in a time of great social corruption, for the protection of
the family, and has probably been continued, not, as a Korean frankly
told Mr. Heber Jones, because men distrust their wives, but because
they distrust each other, and with good reason, for the immorality of
the cities and of the upper classes almost exceeds belief. Thus all
young women, and all older women except those of the lowest class, are
secluded within the inner courts of the houses by a custom which has
more than the force of law. To go out suitably concealed at night, or
on occasions when it is necessary to travel or to make a visit, in a
rigidly closed chair, are the only “outings” of a Korean woman of the
middle and upper classes, and the low-class woman only goes out for
purposes of work.
The murdered Queen told me, in allusion to my own Korean journeys, that
she knew nothing of Korea, or even of the capital, except on the route
of the _Kur-dong_.
Daughters have been put to death by their fathers, wives by their
husbands, and women have even committed suicide, according to Dallet,
when strange men, whether by accident or design, have even touched
their hands, and quite lately a serving-woman gave as her reason for
remissness in attempting to save her mistress, who perished in a fire,
that in the confusion a man had touched the lady, making her not worth
saving!
The law may not enter the women’s apartments. A noble hiding himself
in his wife’s rooms cannot be seized for any crime except that of
rebellion. A man wishing to repair his roof must notify his neighbors,
lest by any chance he should see any of their women. After the age of
seven, boys and girls part company, and the girls are rigidly secluded,
seeing none of the male sex except their fathers and brothers until the
date of marriage, after which they can only see their own and their
husband’s near male relations. Girl children, even among the very poor,
are so successfully hidden away, that in somewhat extensive Korean
journeys I never saw one girl who looked above the age of six, except
hanging listlessly about in the women’s rooms, and the brightness
which girl life contributes to social existence is unknown in the
country.
But I am far from saying that the women fret and groan under this
system, or crave for the freedom which European women enjoy. Seclusion
is the custom of centuries. Their idea of liberty is peril, and I quite
believe that they think that they are closely guarded because they are
valuable chattels. One intelligent woman, when I pressed her hard to
say what they thought of our customs in the matter, replied, “We think
that your husbands don’t care for you very much”!
Concubinage is a recognized institution, but not a respected one.
The wife or mother of a man not infrequently selects the concubine,
who in many cases is looked upon by the wife as a proper appendage
of her husband’s means or position, much as a carriage or a butler
might be with us. The offspring in these cases are under a serious
social stigma, and until lately have been excluded from some desirable
positions. Legally the Korean is a strict monogamist, and even when a
widower marries again, and there are children by the second marriage,
those of the first wife retain special rights.
There are no native schools for girls, and though women of the upper
classes learn to read the native script, the number of Korean women
who can read is estimated at two in a thousand. It appears that a
philosophy largely imported from China, superstitions regarding
dæmons, the education of men, illiteracy, a minimum of legal rights,
and inexorable custom have combined to give woman as low a status in
civilized Korea as in any of the barbarous countries in the world.
Yet there is no doubt that the Korean woman, in addition to being a
born _intrigante_, exercises a certain direct influence, especially as
mother and mother-in-law, and in the arrangement of marriages.
Her rights are few, and depend on custom rather than law. She now
possesses the right of remarriage, and that of remaining unmarried
till she is sixteen, and she can refuse permission to her husband for
his concubines to occupy the same house with herself. She is powerless
to divorce her husband, conjugal fidelity, typified by the goose,
the symbolic figure at a wedding, being a feminine virtue solely.
Her husband may cast her off for seven reasons--incurable disease,
theft, childlessness, infidelity, jealousy, incompatibility with her
parents-in-law, and a quarrelsome disposition. She may be sent back
to her father’s house for any one of these causes. It is believed,
however, that desertion is far more frequent than divorce. By custom
rather than law she has certain recognized rights, as to the control of
children, redress in case of damage, etc. Domestic happiness is a thing
she does not look for. The Korean has a house, but no home. The husband
has his life apart; common ties of friendship and external interest are
not known. His pleasure is taken in company with male acquaintances and
_gesang_; and the marriage relationship is briefly summarized in the
remark of a Korean gentleman in conversation with me on the subject,
“We marry our wives, but we love our concubines.”