Summary Of The Memoirs Of Lady Hyegyong
I am writing an essay on one of the passages from The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong. This passage is written around the time when Lady Hyegyong’s son, the Grand Heir, has officially become the Crown Prince, and was sent to the Upper Palace to be under the guidance of His Majesty and Lady Sonhui. However, this ended in a painful splitting of mother and son.
Lady Hyegyong believes that the primal reason behind her husband’s violent outbursts is due to the lack of affection from his parents – His Majesty King Yongjo and Lady Sonhui – during childhood: “if some sense of intimacy between parents and child had been maintained and if the Prince had not been left completely to the care of strangers, the situation would not have developed to the extreme” …show more content…
However, this shows that there is a significant distance between ideal and reality vis-à-vis Confucianism, as the father executes his own son for not attaining expected code of behavior of the potential king. Even though, he was just a young man, his different attitude was taken as a cause of ill mental issue. This is mostly because, back then, none of them -- the King, his mother, and even his wife -- could not find any other explanation to define his unordinary behavior that are out of the norm. This is hardly unthinkable from modern point of view, but it may not be so surprising, as many social issues – such as homosexuality -- have been diagnosed as mentally ill until recently.
In Korea, men carried on to learn and write in Chinese, apart from letters to women, particular categories of poetry, and other minor pieces that dealt with mainly personal aspects of life. Nonetheless, women wrote almost solely in Korean. They acquired the language as a tool of transmission and self-expression as well as a means of political and social empowerment. This practice altered the basis of social life by permitting women to play a distinguished role in the written discussion, though within the restricted domain of household
Lady Hyegyong believes that the primal reason behind her husband’s violent outbursts is due to the lack of affection from his parents – His Majesty King Yongjo and Lady Sonhui – during childhood: “if some sense of intimacy between parents and child had been maintained and if the Prince had not been left completely to the care of strangers, the situation would not have developed to the extreme” …show more content…
However, this shows that there is a significant distance between ideal and reality vis-à-vis Confucianism, as the father executes his own son for not attaining expected code of behavior of the potential king. Even though, he was just a young man, his different attitude was taken as a cause of ill mental issue. This is mostly because, back then, none of them -- the King, his mother, and even his wife -- could not find any other explanation to define his unordinary behavior that are out of the norm. This is hardly unthinkable from modern point of view, but it may not be so surprising, as many social issues – such as homosexuality -- have been diagnosed as mentally ill until recently.
In Korea, men carried on to learn and write in Chinese, apart from letters to women, particular categories of poetry, and other minor pieces that dealt with mainly personal aspects of life. Nonetheless, women wrote almost solely in Korean. They acquired the language as a tool of transmission and self-expression as well as a means of political and social empowerment. This practice altered the basis of social life by permitting women to play a distinguished role in the written discussion, though within the restricted domain of household