Of Virtuousness And Jealousy--A Research On The Image Of Women And The View To Women During The Western And Eastern Jin, And The Northern And Southern Dynasties

The view to women of a certain era is the people with the ruling position's general and prevalent view to women. Specifically in the era of the Western and Eastern Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, which was an era that the aristocratic kin class held the leading position of politics, economics, culture and other social aspects, the view to women during this era was some kind of the aristocratic kin ruled society's general view and prevalent concept to women. In the premodern time when women losing their right to speak, the so-called view to women was just a result being defined and regulated with the reference of androcentric world and overwhelmed by masculine language, and therefore, in the aim of searching the views to women, one will have to go through the texts written by men and full of masculine linguistic characteristic. In regard of the era of the Western and Eastern Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the written materials about the image of women and the view to women, mostly were aristocratic kin class scholars'works. The image of women shown in these works or that we have summarized from these works, is naturally with the affect and characteristic of this particular era and its leader and the writer of the image of women, which was the aristocratic kin class. Thus, this historical subject's view to women was demonstrated.The image of women and the view to women in the era of the Western and Eastern Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties grew from the soil of the ear of Qin and Han dynasty and it was also with the root of variations, and it was buried the seed of mutation of Tang and Song dynasty.In respect of the view to women of this era, the image of women could be categorized into virtuous lady or jealous woman. The summarization and abstraction of these two categories of images was based upon the view to women of this era. These two categories were both original from the pre-Qin philosophers. The former was the classic model of a positive image of women, which was in the same strain of the traditional confusian view to women, while the later was the representative of a negative image, which was the Western and Eastern Jin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties era's aristocratic kin class's most prevalent and authoritative definition and view to women, and which was also the most remarkable characteristic of the view to women under that period. The main body of this thesis is divided into five parts. The first part defines the difference between virtuousness and jealousy is whether it is in accordance with the classical confusian works' sexual regulations on women, which specifically was that virtuousness was to be not jealous while that jealousy was to be not virtuous. Then the true example of jealous women of the Western and Eastern Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties era will be exhibited, in which the extremes would be a behavior of going through fire and boiling water and no stop until death. Also the special position of aristocratic women would affect the situation and politics. The second part explains the background and course of the atmosphere of jealousy. The Author's point of view is this phenomenon is an inevitable result of aristocratic kin political system. The upper class use marriage to make political and economic coalition and so get the nobles linking with and relying on each other. Thus women with aristocratic parentage were able to control or even press the men. Moreover, "the Awaken of human" and "the enshrouding of ethnic minority's lifestyle" since the Jin and Wei period also greatly fueled the fire of the rising of jealous women. The third part discusses the truth and untruth of jealous women phenomenon. Literature is some kind of a reflection of history, but great amount of jealous women's images in literature or historical biography were not in accordance with the common sense and logic of life, and they were clearly with the writers' intention of smear. The fourth part analyses the conflicts and unification of virtuousness and jealousy, and then dig the deep psychological reason of how jealousy happened. Jealousy under particular era was also women's special way to deliver their persist to love and marriage under a masculine standard classical society, but not the connatural viciousness of women. The fifth part reveals the true condition and miserable suffer of women of the Western and Eastern Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties era. The booming of geishas and the popularization of palace style poets coursed women getting into a fate of being materialization and downtrodden. The truths full of women's blood and tears were definitely not coverable by the two categories of images of virtuous lady praised to be moral model of jealous woman criticized to be negative typical, therefore, the counteraction and deviation of the concept and reality is proved.