福建 烈女敍事 속 자살의 메커니즘과 그 재현에 관한 분석

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the patterns and implications of narratives depicting “public suicide” among women in the Fujian region. Compared to other regions, Fujian exhibited a relatively high incidence of women sacrificing their lives in fidelity to their husbands or fiancés. Notably, Fujian was known for its customs such as “hanging on a stand (datai),” where widows publicly committed suicide outside their homes, and “going to death (benxun),” where young women, having lost their fiancés, would go to their fiancé’s house and publicly end their lives after a series of rituals. Many local elites did not extensively document these suicides, as they are against Confucian ethics. Nevertheless, certain local gazetteer provided some descriptions, highlighting the public and conspicuous nature of these deaths, which exceeded the widely accepted boundaries of female virtue. Furthermore, specific depictions of open suicides by chaste women bear resemblance to sacrificial acts, possibly stemming from Fujian’s longstanding tradition of ghost worship. The suicides of passionate young women resonate with the belief in spirits and ghosts held by local women. Simultaneously, these behaviors can be seen as part of a chastity cult fostered by the local elite. By examining the public suicides in the Fujian region, we can discern a multi-layered structure. Not all of these narratives originate solely from the top-down discourse of fidelity imposed by the empire. Various factors contribute to the emergence of fractures in the overarching narrative surrounding chaste women.