Author: 泰山

In the past, both Western and Eastern scholarship have been guilty of oversimplifying the history of Confucian women. Some put forth a narrative of women as simply victims of Confucian society, conflating Confucianism with patriarchy and arguing that it suppressed their rights and offered little opportunity to recognise their achievements.¹ However, recent scholarship is challenging these kinds of stereotypes about the complex relationship between East Asian women and Confucianism, specifically the relationship between Choson women and Neo-Confucianism. Recent revisionist histories focus on how women expressed themselves through art and literature, and how they used their agency within their social, ideological, and political confines. In addition, scholars are beginning to study marginalized women, including widows and nonelite women, by looking at census records and legal texts.²
In Women and Confucianism in Choson Korea: New Perspectives, Youngmin Kim and Michael J. Pettid advocate for the replacement of the Confucian oppression narrative and other generalisations by more nuanced portrayals of Choson history that consider how different women’s experiences varied from one another based on personality, class, and situation.³ Women of Korea’s Choson dynasty (1392-1910) used various strategies to work within and around the confines of their Confucian society and were sometimes protected by the state.
One example of this is the tradition of chongbu rights in mid-Choson. In China and Choson, the chongbu was the eldest daughter-in-law of a family, meaning the wife of the eldest son of a family lineage. She was treated with deference by other daughters-in-law and given special privileges. According to the Lizhi (the Book of Rites, one of the core texts of Confucianism), the chongbu’s role was to serve during ancestor rites (jesa) and treat honoured guests.⁴ Traditionally, if her husband died and she had no child, the chongbu’s role in jesa passed down to the second son of the family. Over time, the role and rights of the chongbu in Choson expanded. By adopting a son to act as an heir (iphu) (traditionally one of her nephews, but tended to be a distant blood relative), the chongbu could bolster her position in the family and maintain her status. This was essential for the chongbu, who faced the disastrous possibility of being expelled from her home if or when the ancestral rites duties were given to the second son of the family.⁵ The adopting of heirs by women to maintain their chongbu status not only shows how these women were able to protect their position and power within a Confucian context but also demonstrates how women helped shape the dynamics of families and practice of ancestral rites throughout Choson.⁶
Contrary to popular narratives that Confucianism generally oppressed women, women received support from the state on several occasions. In Lee SoonGu’s ‘The Rights of the Eldest Daughter-in-Law and the Strengthening of Adoption of Lineage Heirs in the Mid-Choson Period,’ they note that in 1547, the Office of the Censor-General defended the rights of chongbu to adopt a son and continue jesa duties, a decision also supported by the king.⁷ Another example of the state protecting Choson women was the fact that women were state sanctioned to petition the king by striking a gong and kneeling despite the doctrine of separate spheres, a pillar of Confucian gender ethics that dictates that women are to be relegated to the domestic realm.⁸ When considering these examples, it is apparent that the way Choson women experienced Confucianism varied greatly and is not as simple as it appears at first glance.

1. Youngmin Kim and Michael J. Pettid, Women and Confucianism in Chosǒn Korea: New Perspectives, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 11, Accessed September 24, 2025, ProQuest Ebook Central [↩]
2. Jisoo M. Kim, “Neo-Confucianism, Women, and the Law in Chosŏn Korea,” in Dao Companion to Korean Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 11, ed. Yong Huang (Dordrecht, 2019), unpaginated, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2933-1_17. [↩]
3. Kim, Women and Confucianism, 4 [↩]
4. Lee SoonGu, “The Rights of the Eldest Daugher-in-Law and the Strengthening of Adoption of Lineage Heirs in the Mid-Choson Period” in Women and Confucianism in Chosǒn Korea New Perspectives, eds. Youngmin Kim and Michael J. Pettid (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), Accessed September 24, 2025, 91, ProQuest Ebook Central. [↩]
5. Ibid, 98 [↩]
6. Ibid, 102 [↩]
7. Ibid, 99 [↩]
8. Kim, “Neo-Confucianism, Women, and the Law,” unpaginated [↩]