유교 女訓書의 교육원리에 관한 철학적 분석

A Study of Women's Education in the Confucian Women's Classics

This study aims at examining the nature and limitations of women's education in Confucian women's classics, which had been read during the Choson Dynasty. Such Confucian women's classics are included as Queen Sohye's Naehun(Lessons for Women), Four Women's Classics(Yusaseo; Yukuy, Yunonyu, Naehoon, Yubum), and other works of the Confucian scholars such as Lee Hwang, Song Siyeol, Lee Dukmoo. The educational content of such women's classics can be classified into four types; self-cultivation, human ethical relationship, education of children, and housework. All these education are characterized by the restrict saperation between wife and husband. Recognizing that there had no been proper women's education except learning skills such as spinning, the female authors of the Confucian women's classics urged women to realize the importance of women's education for becoming the virtuous Confucian women. They did so within the neo-Confucian views of women and world. They want to enlighten women through Confucian ethics, since they believe that the relationship between wife and husband is basic in a well-ordered patriarchal society. In Confucian tradition, maintaining a moral character requires education and constant efforts. This is the same for men and women. Natural differences and labor division between the sexes are justified by lawlike assumptions based upon the doctrine of Yin and Yang. The correspondence between human beings and nature legitimates such a dominant code of Confucian ethics as filial piety, wife's obedience to husband, women's chasity as a natural process. It also takes for it granted that women's different education should be limited to the traditional female roles as daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, and mother. Confucian teachings in the texts exclude women's academic learning and critical thinking, but emphasizes the systematic control and subjugation of women. In this way female authors' arguments for women's education offer the protection for the Confucian ethical code, which was given the logical grounds for the discriminate norms and rules between women and men. Their understanding of women's education help to reproduce the ideology of Confucianism through women's spontaneous consent.