| According to the law of modern family, the two parties both have the right of another marriage after the marital relationship is relieved, which has to give credit to the vigorous development of feminist movement in the various countries since the modern times. As the history reviewed, the original idea about the equality of the opposite sex once received enormous challenge after the humanity enters the society of patriarchy, and then the woman status suddenly dropped, which just likes what Engels said: "For women, the overthrown of the matriarchy is the defeat of the world history significance. The husband has also grasped the legal right in the home, while the wife who is disparaged and enslaved turns both the slave to gratify husband lust and the tool to give birth to children." Engels also pointed out that, "In order to guarantee the wife's chastity so that her children are stemmed from a certain father, the wife then falls under her husband's absolute right." But, the Chinese interior civilization which is throughout under the condition of independent development is quite different from the western sea civilization. The natural environment of the East Asian mainland is a relatively independent geography unit on the Earth since the ancient times. China, an East Asian mainland country, is near the vast Pacific Ocean in the east. The people walking with great difficulty to the seashore cannot but halt, "feel inadequate and frustrated". In the west there is the Gobi Desert, toward far, the snowy mountains, many of which are depopulated and life-forbidden zones. In the North those cold and windy wildernesses or frozen earth, unable to be cultivated, make people dejected. In the south there are mountainous regions where the beast appears and disappears on the high mountain ridge and the atmosphere is foul. Therefore people have to "ward off brambles and open up wilderness overgrown with grass" or "do pioneering work in spite of great hardships in order to open the wooded mountain" even if they just want to step southward. The ancient basin Sinian where people live and multiply takes Great Plains in the Yellow River basin and the Yangtze River basin as the center. The fertile lands and plentiful resources are sufficient to maintain the self-sufficient economy and meet the ancients' need. The geographical environment, isolated from outside world, has no alternative but to create the centralized, independent and closed nature of the legal system and the legal thought. Correspondingly, the historical evolution of the Chinese widows' remarriage is also obviously unique.In order to precisely understand Chinese women's power of second marriage in ancient times, especially those widows' right of remarriage, we ought to do textual researches from officially legal literature and seriously historical records. Overall, remarrying was not a big crime from the period of pre-Qin to the last stage of Tang Dynasty. After Southern Song Dynasty, the widows' remarriage often receives great limit, even completely impossible. In Marital History in China's Ancient times Mr. Chen Guyuan pointed out, "Marrying was only positively rewarded in ancient times. Though remarrying was not negatively limited, it was regarded as the evil. There is a so-called saying that 'starving to death is the matter to be slight, but disloyalty, the matter to be big', which was especially advocated by the Song Confucians. Therefore the ancient was irresponsible." This viewpoint is worth discussion. Actually, during several hundred years from the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty to at the end of Southern Song Dynasty, the evolution of widows' remarriage and social convention itself have both changed a lot under gradual influence and seepage of Neo-Confucianism, which had an evidence in the related law literature and the historical data. Yuan Dynasty is a quite special time in the Chinese history. North nomads' certain customs spread all over the nation in this time, which caused the social custom and the legal rule both present some uniquely place, for example there were customs in the marriage system that after the elder brother is dead, the brother-in-law can marry his sister-in-law, and the widow was allowed to remarry. But along with the Mongolian ruler's withdrawal to the north, the custom that the brother-in-law can marry his sister-in-law after his elder brother's death was gradually limited and finally forbidden and the widows' remarrying was also essentially limited in the legal system. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, our country's feudalism was gradually decayed and declined. The reflection on the social custom and the moral standard was that the Confucianism influence since two Song Dynasties has continued to expand, the suppression on women's life freedom and the freedom of marriage came to unprecedented brutal degree, and the widows' remarriage, discriminated for the public opinion, actually met great hindrance.Along with the spread of western culture and its influence on modern China, the collision and blend of Chinese traditional culture and Western modern culture went through a complex process, the custom and ideas about the widows' remarriage in the modern times also experienced a transformation. However, Chinese traditional culture under the situation of independent development was quite different from the western modern culture; therefore it was still very difficult to realize the liberation of widows' misery in reality. In Blessing a widow called Xianglinsao, who remarried after the pitiful destiny, has already made the profound impression to people as a well-known image in the artistic work: The Chinese widows, one of feminine communities which most people despise in the traditional Confucianism society, were strictly requested to be faithful until their death and never to be allowed to remarry. The artistic work is perhaps the refraction of the widows' reality at that time from an angle. Although many men of insight proposed the permission of the widows' remarriage, and it actually played a positive role, however the transformation of social custom and ideas was a process of stratified and gradual changes. Once each kind of new values and new ideas appears, some people support while some people oppose and others wait and see. But those new ideas can only be accepted and even put into practice by more and more people after a series of intense conflict and even face-to-face standing. It needs a long-term transition from the ideas' transformation to the renewal of people's behavior and life style, as well as the change of social custom. The historical evolution of the widows' remarriage in modern times is the very reflection of the confrontation, conflict and fusion of new and old ideas and different cultures.Montesquieu once said that, "The legal explains history; the history illustrates explains the law." From historical evolution of the widow's remarriage, we may see in the certain period of time, the central culture exists in the national culture, but dialectically speaking, "no culture can stand at the top of the mountain forever, for the cultural development is a dynamic process. The cultural fusion is the major tendency. Certainly, the fusion needs to exchange. The way, by emphasizing the heritage of traditional culture intensively or even by taking the pride in a great and proud country at expense of excluding other culture's advantages, is the narrow nationalism, which makes an obstacle to approaching world advanced culture, the slow national development and the intensification of national conflict inside and outside the country. Meanwhile, we should not simply consider the conflict which the weak culture development needs as an invasion to our national culture. The Chinese traditional culture and the western culture have strongly mutual complementary. The Chinese culture has its unique charm, therefore, we must unceasingly reflex own culture, put its reasonable ingredient forward and cause it to become the outstanding cultural achievement which universe shares. |
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