A Study On Images Of Merchants' Women In The Novels Of Tang And Five Dynasties

There exits a specific female group in the novels of Tang and five Dynasties——merchants'women,which includes merchants' female family members and self-employed businesswomen.At the present,the researches on merchants' women mainly focus on the poems about merchants' women,novels about merchants and related researches about women in Tang Dynasty,which involves in some images of merchants' women,but deep and systematic analyses are not enough.Therefore,in this article the merchants' women in the novels of Tang and five Dynasties are regarded as the research object,and the images of merchants' women will be analyzed and discussed from living condition,emotional life,family roles,property inheritance,social status and ethical awareness.In addition,the reasons of the difference between novel and poetry in shaping the merchants' women' image are worthy of being explored.The first chapter mainly analysis the living condition and emotional life of merchants' women,discussing the living condition from the operating condition,life safety,family life and the widow life of the merchants' women and exploring the emotional life of the merchants couples as well as the appeal of merchants' women under the constraints of moral.The second chapter inquires into the family roles and social status of merchants' women.The family roles of merchants' women include merchants' daughters,merchants' wives and merchants'mothers,whose family roles and status are quite different respectively,and all of them enjoy property rights in merchants' family.The general mood of society of Tang Dynasty is open and women' status has improved.The merchants' women' existing rights on joining the army and politics,dress and makeup,cultural education,marriage independence and lawsuits of legal cases reflect the change of their social status.The third chapter mainly discusses the ethical awareness and commercial sense of merchants' women.The merchants'women in Tang Dynasty have the freedom to choose their mates and divorce and remarry.Besides,their chastity conception is eroded relatively and they have been less constrained by etiquette.Moreover,the revenge behaviors of merchants' women embody the tendency of chivalrous and the conception of wifely fidelity and filial piety.Merchants' women' commercial morality and management ideas focus on the distinguish of righteousness and interest.The forth chapter try to analysis the difference of merchants' women' images in novels and poetry as well as the reasons.The poems about merchants'women mainly shows the image of yearning women while in the novels about merchants' women there are still virtuous women,widows,impoverished women,avenging merchants' daughters and chivalrous businesswomen.The novels present diversified images of merchants' women from appearance,psychology,language and movement and so on.The reasons contain the creative motivation of literati'novels,the tradition of attaching importance to faithful recording and the tendency to the construction of characters and story-line.