The Afternoon Of Blow Persimmons Analysis

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Son So-hŭi's "The Afternoon of Mellow Persimmons" reveals the Confucian society's pressure on women to bear children and how the Confucian values demoralize barren women. Barrenness, in Confucian society, was one of the seven vices for which wives were expelled from her husband's house. Confucian society was especially obsessed with preserving patrilineage, and thus, bearing children became the most important role of women. As Professor Kim mentioned in the introduction, "a woman's body was considered a biological and material instrument to serve patrilineal intersts" (Kim, 7). Perhaps the Confucian society's obsession of continuing their patrilineage was influenced by their concerns about receiving filial support from their children later in life. However, this kind of obsession demoralized women to feel less valuable and needed if they couldn't give her in-laws what they have expected from her …show more content…

She described herself as an abandoned woman, her barrenness caused her to feel guilty about continuing her relationship with her husband and forced her to come to the temple to pray for a child. Her husband, who first refused her suggestion of taking a concubine, changed his mind as he slowly grew his desire for a child. Although she believed in her husband's affection towards her, watching the young woman giving birth to a son caused the protagonist to feel segregated from the family and less valuable to her husband. Regardless of how well her husband treated her, the fact that his mistress could give him something she couldn't made her suffer the indignity of being "useless" to her husband. When the husband offered her an amber ring which was also on his mistress's hand, it stirred her sense of shame and inferiority toward her husband and the mistress. The ring, which was given to the young mistress before the protagonist, degraded her dignity as a

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