"three Words" And "amazing" Matchmaker Image Research

Matchmaker is a product of the ancient Chinese marriage system.It plays an important role in sociology and the traditional marital custom.Feng Menglong's "Sanyan" and Ling Mengchu's "Er pai" contain various matchmakers.They possess not only the common characteristics of the traditional matchmakers,but also some new characteristics corresponding to the trend of social thought in the middle and later period of the Ming dynasty. In this paper, we study the matchmaker's image characteristics and its cultural connotations from four aspects.First, we discuss the development process of matchmaker's image that seems to be typical in the previous literatures, analyze the matchmaker's image characteristics during different periods,and examine their accumulation actions to the matchmaker composition in Ming and Qing dynasty.Second,we classify the various matchmakers in the "Sanyan" and "Er pai".By analyzing the matchmaker's roles in the novels, we draw a conclusion about the matchmaker's image characteristics.Third,based on the Ming and Qing dynasties'social,economical and cultural background,we examine the matchmaker's characteristics corresponding to that times which presented in the "Sanyan" and "Er pai".As a result, we summarize the matchmaker's occupational,secularizational and sentimental characteristics.Finally, we make a deeper discuss on the matchmaker's image property from some angles such as the marriage view, the woman's life,social status in the feudal society and so on.Then,we explore the matchmaker's aesthetic values from the two sides:the drive to the novel's plot and the enrichness to figures in some novels.