On The Evolution Of The Concept Of Women's Chastity By Terms Of The Legendary Drama In The Late Ming And Early Qing Dynasty

The chastity, and its content is extremely extensive, it is a concept, a system, a kind of social life, and even culture. However, as old deeply victimized women, it is a set of shackles in the neck and an invisible net that overshadow the social life. It is also a cage or one of the sharp-edged knives. As a system, the chastity has changed the justice ceremony into the heavenly principles, which maltreat the countless hearts and lives of women's. It has always been the case that the ancient history of women's studies is inseparable from the issue of chastity, moreover it is deserved to be studied. This paper is based on previous studies to discuss the changes of the concept of chastity during the Ming and Qing Dynasties through narrate the legendary drama in this period.First, the paper makes a clear organization, concerning the predecessors'research on women's chastity in the introduction. Most of them analyze it from the official history and fiction; few articles involve legendary drama, and the concept of chastity of women has changed because of the stringent system of Ming and Qing dynasties. And then, the first chapter begins to talk about the development of the concept of chastity. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, on the one hand enforce the concept of chastity, on the other hand re-exanimate humanity, emotion and desire. The second chapter the author is going to take the late Ming and early Qing dynasties legendary drama as an example to narrate and comment the chastity of women in each stratum, where the concept of chastity has changed. The opposition of chastity is opposing the"courtesy"resistance to the"rationale"resistance, and under the main sentiment thought's influence, the emotion was the rationale. The authors tried to make the emotion, courtesy and rationale to achieve a harmonious situation. The playwright in that period was on the maintenance of traditional moral stance and to correct the personality of emancipating the mind since the middle of Ming Dynasty. This is mainly manifested in the works which portray a kind of chaste girls that existing sex without rebellion arguments. At last, the author states the reason why the chastity of women has changed in the late Ming and early Qing period, such as: social, political, economic and ideological factors, and so on.So, in the late Ming and early Qing period, the concept of the chastity of women has changed, and we can see from the slowly awakening of women's self-awareness, and the enhancement of their status which was regarded as a tremendous progress in women's liberation movement of china.