Korean fiction was relatively slow in developing written forms. It is not in fact until the late seventeenth century that works by certainly identifiable authors can be found. The tradition of story-telling is, of course, very much older, but the linguistic conditions of the country prevented that tradition from blossoming into the production of novels, as the Chinese and Japanese traditions had done long before. There was no sanction for the wide use of the vernacular in literature. Although after the invention of a native Korean script in the middle of the fifteenth century it was theoretically possible to write the national language, in fact the entrenched use of Chinese continued to dominate Korean literary culture. It was possible to write novels in Chinese, but the scholastic tradition set more store on poetry and discussion than on fiction. Fiction in Korea remained for the most part oral.
Under a Confucian orthodoxy, male society did not provide the best setting for the growth of fiction. The Confucian ethos gave men a great interest in history, so great that ‘made-up stories’ were deemed frivolous; the stress on philosophy—especially moral philosophy—emphasized this disregard for fiction. The western concept of the novel as a contribution to thought has scarcely even today made much impression on Korea.
When fiction came to be written down, adventure and romance were the chief topics, and it was only to be expected that the needs of women would be of great significance for the writers. Equally inevitable was the fact that only upper-class women and professional entertainers would be realistically described in written fiction. For coolies’ wives and farmers’ daughters, and indeed sometimes even for the upper classes, fictional descriptions of their ideals and their dreams would have more success than true descriptions of the hardship which was the lot of most people. Life in East Asia was hard by any modern western standard. Even the ladies of the palaces lived in what would now be regarded as unbearable discomfort, cold in winter and stifled in summer, without bathrooms, without holidays, and with acute discomfort if they ever travelled. Japanese ladies had bathrooms, but their quarters were in general fitted for a rugged life. The men were no better off, and because such discomfort was accepted as part of the way of the world, it was not remarked on in fiction. Occasional phrases remind the modern reader of the smells of the old houses and palaces, of the rigors of the climate, and the problems of the water supply. Most of the nation lived in what its present-day descendants would call squalor.
Physical discomfort was not the worst thing in life. Nervous strain was intense, and grew more intense as one went up the social scale. The byzantine politics of the palace were reflected in other large households. Everyone was vulnerable to jealousy. A woman’s social fortunes were tied to the careers of her menfolk, who could be influenced by the way in which she satisfied the men and thereby held at bay the dangers of concubines and singing-girls. Such stresses were also accepted as part of the framework of life, but differed from physical hardships in that they provided suitable material for fiction. They were subject to luck, that ‘good fortune’ which is a leit-motif of East Asian literature: one could always hope that things would turn out better, or stay well. Dreams of good fortune buoy up most of the human race on its passage through the vale of tears.
That the longest, and in most ways the best, of Korean stories should have been written specifically for a woman and called ‘a nine cloud dream’, Kuunmong, is therefore not in the least surprising. It was intended to divert and console an ageing mother. The interest of the story centers in its women, three of whom are mothers, and the remaining eight eventually married to one man. This is a reductio ad absurdum of a major problem of Yi dynasty family life: secondary wives and concubines. In Kuunmong the problem works out with smooth perfection, comfortably suggesting that such a life was possible; or perhaps ironically understating that such felicity was impossible. The ability of the eight women to live together is of greater concern than their relations with their husband. His role is to provide the social framework on which they can embroider the pattern of what really matters to them: their emotional relationships in the inner quarters. Their world is as narrow as their courtyards, as wide as the human heart. Affection is what matters most. The husband plays a role that is remarkably modern in that he is expected to provide a firm emotional basis for his women. The book is a dream of what women wished for: women’s converse with women was as essential as marriage itself.
Philosophically the book is an account of the tension between Confucianism and Buddhism that was latent in Korean thinking, but more obvious in the lives of women than of men. A man could be brought up to despise Buddhism and be a whole-hearted Confucian. Most men were. Women had to conform to the role allotted to women by Confucianism but were rarely allowed to study Confucianism deeply, and would probably have had little taste for it had they been so allowed They retained much Buddhist devotion, and were thus induced to enjoy the religious aspect of Kuunmong. Simply expressed, the argument was between Confucian emphasis on the right ordering of this world, (with its natural concomitant of the pursuit of honor by men vying in their worthiness to achieve that right ordering), and the other-worldliness of Buddhism. The Confucian who failed in his personal ambitions could find solace in self-regard, quietly rejoicing in his own nobility of mind, or taking comfort from a more or less stoical, yet essentially humanistic philosophy. For men this was usually sufficient; for women it was not enough. They needed the help of mysticism and of religious devotion which Buddhism was able to supply. Men were sometimes attracted to Buddhism in a notably more intellectual fashion, but the confrontation between Confucianism and Buddhism in Kuunmong is only implicitly philosophical. It is essentially poetic. Kim Man-jung, who wrote the book, was deeply influenced by women, and wrote naturally in a vein that would appeal to his mother, who had been the dominant influence in his spiritual formation.
Kuunmong, however, is not a romance for ill-educated women. On the contrary, it is carefully constructed fiction for a discriminating and sophisticated woman who had led her family from distress to success and then seen the almost inevitable fall from success which was the lot of the seventeenth-century Korean politician. The bitter uncertainties of life in that atmosphere of jealousy and maneuvering appeared to be under control by the men. Life was tougher for women, who had to accept the family fortunes for which the men were responsible. For women the comforts of Buddhism were of greater importance.
But not all women, not even all court women, were either well-educated or mild. Many of them were powerful political forces and they were openly accepted as such. Kuunmong does not touch on this aspect of women’s life because the author could not have shown his women characters manipulating the male characters politically without spoiling the moral idealism of the book. He could allow himself to be witty, and could describe in full the way in which women teased men sexually, so long as he did that with propriety within the contemporary conventions.
The History of Queen lnhyŏn belongs to a different literary genre, and describes the same society as Kuunmong does, but as history, not as fiction. Yet it gives a heightened account of the noble qualities of some of the male characters, applauding Confucian virtues to an extent that is obsequious to King Sukchong (about whose personality there is obviously something important to be said on the debit side); and describes a virtuous woman, in the person of Queen lnhyŏn, driving her virtue to logical extremes that verge on caricature. The book is staunchly orthodox and makes no mention of Buddhism, though it describes a macabre and despicable charade of shamanism. The result is an account of the life of aristocratic women at once historically more accurate and poetically more distorted than the picture provided by Kuunmong. Chang Hŭibin is an ill-educated, coarse, selfish and scheming woman, the antithesis of the ideal. Whether the real Chang Hŭibin was as bad as the character in the History is of little importance. There were women of this kind, and they played important roles in politics. In describing her the writer intends a contrast with the perfection of Queen Inhyŏn’s character; indirectly he underlines the weakness of the king, and of any other men who could be swayed by such women. Thus the polemical purposes of the History provide a revealing account of the life and character of highly-born women. The formality of the writing does not obscure the relentless intensity of purpose and emotion that distinguished the life of the palace from the life of the commoner.
Both Kuunmong and The History of Queen lnhyŏn deal with the life of aristocrats. Ch’unhyang ka comes to us in a text that was formulated for different audiences. Unlike the other two works it is properly part of oral literature. The heroine is not an aristocrat, but she is of aristocratic descent and could reasonably be imagined marrying into an aristocratic family. Social protest has a long history in East Asia, and elements of it are much easier to descry in Ch’unhyang ka than they are in the other two stories in this collection; but it would be a mistake to emphasize the disparate social origins of the hero and heroine and treat that point as the whole purpose of the story. (It would be wiser to note that though Ch’un-hyang’s mother was a dancing-girl, her father was an aristocrat. The social distinction is a subtle device to provide and emphasize romance, rather than a blunt instrument of social criticism.) The audience for which Ch'unhyang ka was intended constitutes the real social distinction between this work and the other two. Ch’unhyang’s audience could include the illiterate, and it is provincial, whereas the other two are metropolitan; it is more human, less urbane; it contains low comedy, contrasting with the high comedy of Kuunmong. It does not describe the lower classes, but it was designed to appeal to all classes.
It resembles the other two works, nevertheless, in that it deals with the ideal woman, and sets its ideal in an aristocratic milieu. Of all the elements that have been blended in the story—romantic love, social justice, melodrama, horseplay, mild eroticism, descriptive poetry, high morality—idealized female virtue is the most important. The point is adequately proved by the alternative titles by which the story has been known. The women of Kuunmong are an ideal group, Inhyŏn is a paragon of correctitude and goodness, and we are expected to admire them, perhaps even to envy them. What distinguishes Ch’unhyang, who is equally idealized, is that clearly we are expected to respond to her with affection and with a pity warmer than that elicited by the dazzlingly virtuous Queen Inhyŏn, whom we never see falling in love and romping under the quilts with her husband. In spite of the literary conventions that mould the form of Ch’unhyang, the story is essentially earthy, and so the ideal of Korean womanhood comes over more believably. If the T’ang court of Kuunmong is cooled by the fragrant breezes of cloud-cuckoo-land, and the palaces of Queen Inhyŏn enshrine morals that surpass our belief, the village alleys and vulgar parties of Ch'unhyang’s lusty Namwŏn give us an insight into the place of feminine idealism in the life of the whole peninsula of Korea.
The constant principles that inspired Korean women were the same as those that inspired Korean men: the principles of orthodox Confucianism. But humanity kept breaking through. Women wanted to be modest, pure, obedient, ceremonious, and noble-minded. They were also jealous, ambitious, and clever. Some were ignorant, but many were accomplished and well-educated. The tension between the formal role expected of them by society and the spiritual forces within them combined to make women more interesting subjects for fiction than men were.
Did these women live fulfilled and happy lives? The answer must be Yes. Fictional descriptions of ideals presuppose a sound basis in a happy view of life. If there is real lack of fulfilment there will be a lack of consistent ideals in fiction. Despair does not breed ideals, but blank questioning. No one should be misled by the superficial fact that western women and twentieth-century women could never find happiness within the conventions of Yi dynasty society.