Study Of Women In The Song And Legal Status

With marriage, family, property relationship and criminal justice as its clues, the paperpresents a comprehensive survey of the legal status of female in Song Dynasty. It iscomposed of 5 chapters and 14 sections, mainly involving the following viewpoints:The main realm of activity for the ancient female was limited to marriage and family.What is more, a few western scholars hold the belief that all the living content for femalewas marriage. Therefore, as the key content for exploring the legal status of female in SongDynasty, marriage and family constitutes the first 2 chapters. Chapter 1 reviews, based onlegal stipulations, the marriage autonomy and the maternal power within family reflected inthe female lives. In terms of the marriage autonomy, the legal regulations and the practicallives supported each other, with each having its own development; the legal status offemale in Song Dynasty is tried to be understood from the marriage establishment &elimination, as well as the era features existing with the marriage at that time. The chapteris classified into 3 sections. Section 1 discusses the limited autonomy upon the marriageestablishment; Section 2 presents the female status upon the elimination of marriagerelationship; and the legal status of female reflected by the marriage features is covered inthe Section 3. As the premier representation of female's legal status, the maternal power isboth the component and natural extension of the paternal power. If there was no regulationon the dual-sex of parents and grandparents within the paternal power, the maternal powercould not have been backup up. As for this aspect, the legal stipulation was quite important,in addition to the essential factor of normal practice. The performance of maternal power infamily was divided into 2 types. First, it was maternal power in common families, whichwas of the significance of universality. Second, it was the maternal power of royal female.Starting from this point, the participation in political affairs by emperor's mother in SongDynasty was not only the key representation of maternal power, but also the best and mostmature mode for female to participate in political affairs because the potential of disturbingpolitical affairs by emperor's relatives on his mother's/wife's side was well settled througheffective adjustment to the bureaucratic mechanism by laws (including the rules of royalfamily). The chapter is classified into 4 sections. The content for the first 2 sections is asabove mentioned. Section 3 discusses the safeguarding of maternal power by filial conducts.Section 4 talks about the legal status of other females.The core subject in Chapter 3 is the legal status of female in the property relationship,?.Abstractwhich is another key evidence that the female enjoyed quite high legal status in SongDynasty. In the dynasty, laws stipulated in a detailed way the female's right of inheritancefor property, mirroring that the attention to female's inheritance for property as well as theimprovement of female's legal status of economy was without parallel in history.Composed of 2 sections, Chapter 4 discusses the female's legal status with respect tocriminal justice, focusing on the female's crimes, punishments and the legal solicitudes.Section 1 presents the legal status of female in criminal affairs, highlighting the female'scrimes and punishments as well as the important effects to the ancient reform of criminalpenalty by the crimes against female and the corresponding punishments. Section 2discusses the female's legal status in the administration of justice, probing the solicitudesand rights enjoyed by female in the administration ofjustice and lawsuits.In Song Dynasty, females enjoyed quite high status in marriage and family, in additionto mo...