Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ...in the remark of a Korean gentleman in-conversation with me on the subject, "We marry our wives, but we love our concubines." again, and there are children by the second marriage, those of the first wife retain special rights. There are no native schools for girls.and though women of the upper classes learn to read the native script, the number of Korean women who can read is estimated at two in a thousand. It appears that a philosophy largely imported from China, superstitions regarding daemons, the educationX of men, illiteracy, a minimum of legal rights, and inexorable custom have combined to give woman as low a status in J civilised Korea as in any of the barbarous countries in the J world. Yet there is no doubt that the Korean woman, in addition to being a born intriguante, exercises a certain direct influence, especially as mother and mother-in-law, and in the arrangement of marriages. Her rights are few, and depend on custom rather tl law. She now possesses the right of remarriage, and that remaining unmarried till she is sixteen, and she can refuse permission to her husband for his concubines to occupy the same house with herself. She is powerless to divorce her husband, conjugal fidelity, typified by the goose, the symbolic figure at a wedding, being a feminine virtue solely. Her husband may cast her off for seven reasons--incurable disease, theft, childlessness, infidelity, jealousy, incompatibility with her parents-in-law, and a quarrelsome disposition. She may be sent back to her father's house for any one of these causes. It is believed, however, that desertion is far more frequent than divorce. By custom rather than law she has certain recognised rights, as to the control of children, redress in case of damage, ...
