Research On The Implementation Of Marriage Law Movement In The Early Stage Of The People’s Republic Of China

The feudal marriage system featured on the arranged、bussiness marriage and theview that men are superior to women lasted for thousands of years.Innumerablewomen were bounded to the old system.They were even abused and persecuted bytheir husbands and parents-in-law,living in a sad and humble life.However,becausethe divorce and remarry were not accepted by the society,they could only maintaintheir painful marriage.On May1,1950,the marriage law of The People’s Republic of China wasformally issued.It legally abolished traditional feudal marriage system,and establishedmarriage system with marriage freedom, equality between men and women. Legallyguaranteed women’s marriage independence.In order to implement the rules of the marriage law into practice, the wholenation carried out a high-powered movement to implement the marriage law.Thismovement lasted for3years.It mobilized various publicity power, took all kinds ofpropaganda ways, and lifted the climax of studying and implementing the marriagelaw. It made the marriage law widely known and made remarkableachievement.Through the propaganda and education,people’s political thinkingconsciousness were improved.They struggled on the old feudal marriage system andfinally gained great victory.Young men and women were liberated from the feudalmarriage system. Arranged and business marriage reduced,men and women began tohave free love and then marry to each other. Women’s status in the family and societysignificantly improved, the relationship between husband and wife,mother-in-law anddaughter-in-law became harmonious, and10millions of bright happy new familywere born.Howerever,the change of marriage system could not easily be reached. Becausetraditional marriage notions were entrenched, It’s transition needed long-termunremitting efforts.Besides,the way of implementation of the marriage law was sosingle, political means were hard to fundamentally eliminate people’s identity to theold system,and the feudal marriage idea still existed in different levels. Besides,in theFeudal society,Men were always out in the busy,women were busy at home. Womenlacked the independent ability to survive, and survival can’t be guaranteed. So theywouldn’t easily put forward a divorce.After the marriage law movement, women’sliving conditions were still difficult. To completely abolish feudal marriage idea wasstill a long-term and arduous task.This paper will be divided into three parts：The first part discusses from the following aspects: the undesirable customs inthe early stage of the establishment of our country, the formulation of marriage law inthe period of the new-democratic revolution, and the formulation and content of NewChina’s first marriage law. The second part summarizes the process of implementation of marriage lawmovement. It introduces three stages: the preliminary stage, the further stage and thehigh stage. These three parts carries out step by step and from the shallow to deep.The third part generalizes the effects and experiences of the marriage lawmovement. The effects reflects in these aspects: it abolishes the old marriage system,liberates the women and promotes the development of production. While the effectsof marriage law movement provides useful reference to the foundation of harmonioussociety.