Epilogue: The Death Of Woman Wang

In the epilogue to The Death of Woman Wang, we see several ways in which Chinese culture determined the sentence meted out to the Jens by Huang. False accusation of innocent persons was a capital crime in 17th century China, punishable by death. The Jens, however, were not executed. The largest factor in sparing the younger Jen, was based around the cultural importance placed on continuation of family lines and the strict ways in which this could acceptably happen. China was not only patriarchal, but also patrilineal. This means that family descent could only be counted through the men. Woman were not able to pass on lineage or surnames except under very rare circumstances. Ancestor worship was very important in this culture, and only the children from the male line could worship the ancestors. In this culture, it was disrespectful, even blasphemous to die without having a son. Family connections were everything to this society. The elder Jen only had one son, and this, the younger Jen, had no sons. This would be seen as quite a tangled web in the society of our reading. If the younger Jen were executed, the elder Jen would be disgraced when he later passed away, having died without a son. Also the family line would die out. Two very difficult things.

The fact that she was killed, was really less important here, than why or how she was killed (if that makes sense). In our society, there would be an uproar over this death and justice would be demanded. But being a woman, Wang had few rights to begin with, add to that her running away and infidelities, and it becomes troublesome in this culture to determine if her death was even a wrong act. Because of this aspect of the culture, the sentence meted out focused solely on how it would affect the Jen family, rather than having a focus on avenging woman Wang. In fact, under this culture, woman Wang is viewed as deserving to