Representation Of Women's Marriage And Family Life In The Ming Dynasty From The New Chinese Unearthed Inscription

The woman history is a hot spot to which academic researchers havepaid attention in the recent years. If we have an overview on the 20 years' results oftheir researches, we can easily draw a conclusion that they have mainly focused onwomen's status, education, social life as well as ideal concept. However, little concem isinvolved actually in women's marriage or family life. It should be noted that in China'sancient customs people distinguished gender roles as outer-man and inner-woman. Somarriage and family life not only played a lifelong role for woman, but might be fieldsthe overwhelming majority of women were deeply involved in. So far as I know,nobody has made a thorough analysis and research on women's marriage and family lifein Ming Dynasty from the unique perspective of Epitaph. From this perspective, mypaper aims at representing the actual situations in Ming Dynasty with the "gender" and"roles" theory of sociology. Also wide range of documents and information ontombstones will be illustrated to help my thesis offer a new Visual Angle for the womenstudies in Ming Dynasty.As the Primary Assumption, my thesis is set in the background of Ming Dynasty,taking the earlier and later changes in women's marriage and family life for horizontalclues and family women development "daughter-wife-mother" vertical ones.Furthermore, by representing the dynamic process of women's Ethics and Moralsdevelopment, this thesis discusses preliminarily the causes of these changes,experiencing the Stigma of times as well as spirit suppression and dissimilation onwomen. Of course the focus falls on women's ethic norms in roles division and theirliving conditions.Thanks to the limitation of collected information, this thesis only makes an initialinduction, collation and disquisition of the feminine inscriptional records in the book theNew Chinese Unearthed Inscription, which center the upper and middle class women'smarriage and family life in Ming Dynasty. This thesis is divided into five chapters: The Introductory part mainly introduces the origin of the selected topic, meanings,research methods and related developments in this area. Women in Ming Dynasty, aspecial social group hold the important position in the woman history research.Meanwhile, few records can be found in ancient official history about women.Therefore the original sources from ancient epitaphs seem extremely valuable especiallyabout women's marriage and family life. This paper will draw support from suchinformation in the New Chinese Unearthed Inscription and illustrate women's marriageand family life taking the epitaphs in Ming Dynasty as examples.The first chapter is devoted to introducing the developments and changes of thetombstone shapes of Ming Dynasty, an era when epitaphs began to decline gradually.Understanding the developments in inscriptional constructions will contribute to ourdistinguishing the actual conditions of the feminine records.Chapterâ…¡classifies the epitaph records on the whole and reveals theircharacteristics of women's marriage and family life. Based on the sociology role theory,there are three types of the Ming Dynasty inscriptions: men inscription, Husband andwife sharing the grave inscription, the feminine inscription. This thesis makes a researchand analysis from four different views.Chapterâ…¢is the use of Sociology role theory upon materials, paying attention tothe periods of a woman: daughter, wife and mother, thus leading to the concem aboutthe women's marriage and family life. Generally speaking, the requirements for awoman can be stated as "to be kind, gentle, filial and polite as a girl; to be virtuous,dutiful, noble-minded and biddable as a wife; to supervise and urge children's study andmake magnificent the family asa mother".Chapterâ…£is to relate the phenomenon to the causes with the gender theoryanalysis. Accordingly, the permeation of social gender system, the institution ofmarriage and cultural heritage, the influence of traditional ethic and morality as well asmetamorphic aesthetic mentality psychology of male are the roots of women'srepression.Chapterâ…¤is to explain this kind of phenomenon and its impact on nowadaysgeneration along with its edification. To some extent, woman's marriage and family life in Ming Dynasty, defmitely may offer some reference to women in modern times. Italso set up a model for behavior regulations and utterances of modern female as well asfor us to explore development China's feminism.In Conclusion it is summarized and noted that Epitaph materials can be mademore extensive and better reorganized, because there is more room for development.And the epitaphs on the lives of women are in some way full of flatteries. From thisperspective, the number of epitaphs is the "idealism" of the social situation at that time,since the majority of epitaphs in Ming Dynasty belong to the upper and middle classes.So this study just represents part of women's lives in Ming Dynasty. Women's life inlower classes is not involved.