Household Policy And National Recognition: An Analysis Of The Divorce Transformation During The Republic Of China

From Political Reform at the end of the Qing Dynasty until today, as marriage laws have transformed, aside from being innovative and different than their precedents, have complex implications. Marriage laws are tightly enmeshed in a people's ideology, popular custom, and thereby influenced by long traditions in China, reflecting beliefs held long and dear by the people, themselves. New laws and old values, as well as old laws and new values are constantly vying with each other. When laws do not suit peoples'needs, consequences soon surface. The difficulties and choices faced by a married woman do not speak only of her self, but also of the society she is in, including both its explicit institutional structures as its implicit values and norms.This thesis will use an ample amount of divorce cases and legal precedents as well as historical newspaper and magazine coverage to discuss four main phenomenal changes found in late Qing dynasty divorce disputes. The first type of change takes place on an institutional level, examining changes in China's divorce policy. Second, we will look at the changes in the very reasons given for divorce. Third, the very place for the divorce proceedings changed from the ancestral hall to the courts. And fourth, we will examine the changed ways in which popular opinion disseminated, mainly from rumor and word-of-mouth to full-blown media circuses and scandals.By examining and analyzing these four main changes in divorce trends, we can see two main ways of treating divorce emerge. The first course of action, advocated by legal elites who leaned towards Western law, borrowed western legal discourse and reasoning to establish overt divorce policy. The second, advocated by tradition as well as the people, and already proven institutionally ineffective, was to maintain the status quo—"closeted"divorce.Via this analysis of vicissitudes in divorce policy, we can see how National government policies are innovated in a society formulated by long tradition and hard-to-transform values. How did marriage and divorce get taken out of the household and village and moved into the courts? By examining the forces and changes at hand, we can also make other inferences concerning the diminishing powers and privacies enjoyed by private households as National power grew.