Becoming A Women By Custom:Gender Analysis Of Wedding Customs In Wuxiang County,Shanxi Province

Wedding is the main embodiment of marriage customs,which embodies the connotation of the gender.This paper takes the marriage customs in WuXiang county,located in the Taihang mountain area,in Shanxi Province as the main object of investigation,and use the customs that female undertakes before and after the wedding as auxiliary survey,to discuss marriage custom guide female to achieve identity transformation,and focus on the function of shaping the ideal female in different stages,so as to analyze the process and results of female gender construction.The study found that woman through the custom of "strange maiden","recalls","tea and changed to" are shaped into the following image: family dutiful daughter,husband's family's clever daughter-in-law and virtuous wife,most of them are recipient to the different requirements of different identities,but some of requirements is formal to obey.The paper is mainly divided into five parts.The first chapter introduces the research purpose,significance and theoretical basis of this paper,and explains the reasons for choosing WuXiang county as the survey site.The second chapter introduced the change of social interaction and behavior,appearance management and life skills learning of woman before marriage,and the preliminary construction of her gender by premarital customs.The third chapter explains the wedding as an occasion for female's gender performance and identity transformation,female under the guidance of wedding customs to shape gender norms,and the influence of custom after wedding on the construction of female gender.The fourth chapter summarizes the gender concept contained in the marriage custom of WuXiang county,the influence of the marriage custom on the female gender construction,and the traditional ideal female image constructed by the marriage custom,such as family dutiful daughter,husband's family's clever daughter-in-law and virtuous wife.The fifth part is the conclusion of the thesis,which reiterate the marriage custom culture as one of the means to construct the ideal traditional female role,with the process and result of female being shaped by marriage custom.