Study On Women's Remarriage In Song Dynasty

This thesis makes a study of the women's remarriage in Song dynasty from three respects.The first part introduces the phenomenon of women's remarriage in Song dynasty. It's easy to be found out from historical materials that, all over Song dynasty, from ruling class to poor common people, the phenomenon of women's remarriage is universal.The second part analyses the deep reasons to that phenomenon. In the Song period, widows with little land were forced to remarry others because of the prosperities of the heavy land ownerships; while the developments of commodity economy impelled the thought of pursuing profit while slighting justice, and with such, did the Confucianism chastity not occupy the dominant position at that time. Both of the two points mentioned above leaded to the lack of chastity thought and vast permission to women's remarriage. In addition, laws of Song had a lot of provisions on protecting women's remarriage, too. The imbalance of men and women arising from female infanticide was the social reason of remarriage. At last, the open chastity of Tang dynasty and the adjacent nationality in Song dynasty was another reason for the remarriage phenomenon. In a word, looking into the phenomenon, we can get reasons associated not only with economy and thought, but law and society.The third part objectively appraises the right of women's remarriage in Song dynasty. Women's remarriage in Song dynasty was very common, but, it didn't appear to us women at that time had sufficient rights to remarriage. In fact, there are many passive even forced reasons under the general phenomenon, and, it's also unsufficient for the rights of remarriage enjoyed by women in Song dynasty .