Women's social status in Tang dynasty : an analytical study focusing on the divorce system = Cong "Tang lü, hu hun" he li zhi du kan Tang dai fu nü di wei

Abstract

Under every regime, marriage is one of the essential factors to affect the development of a country. Before the Tang Dynasty, the divorce system was already practiced in the Chinese society due to the long lasting ancient rites. In ancient China, ‘qichu’ and ‘yijue’ were the typical and traditional divorce ways, but not under the legal system. Under these systems, women got divorce with no consent always happened. The low status of women under the divorce system was obvious. In Tang Dynasty, the ancient feudal law with perfect contents was existed, which was ‘The Tang Law Dredges Opinion’. It innovated the marriage law in the Chinese history. Apart from the ‘qichu’ and ‘yijue’ divorce system, the ‘divorce with consent’ system is an important part of marriage law to show the status of women improved to some extent in Tang Dynasty. Under ‘divorce with consent’ system, women had the right to take the initiative to dissolve the marriage relationship.

Based on the historical records and materials, such as ‘releasing wife book’, poems and epitaphs in Tang Dynasty, this paper would analysis the reality of practicing the ‘divorce with consent’ system and the influence of this system about the women’s status in Tang Dynasty. On the other hand, the reasons about the Tang emperors established this system also reflected the rise of women’s status in the certain extent, for instances, economic, political and cultural aspects.

The paper contains two parts. The first part focuses on the practice about the traditional divorce systems before the Tang Dynasty. The historical course about the change of names on the divorce systems is briefly recorded. The practice about ‘qichu’, ‘yijue’ and ‘divorce with consent’ system are analyzed by the historical materials before Tang Dynasty in order to show the difference about the women’s status in the second part.

The second part mainly focuses on analyzing ‘divorce with consent’ system in Tang Dynasty with the women’s relationship. The ‘releasing wife book’, poems and epitaphs is going to demonstrate the practice of the ‘divorce with consent’ system. This part would analyze the structure and content of the ‘releasing wife book’ in details. The words and procedures reflect the characteristics about women under the law of marriage. Besides, the Tang emperors set up the ‘divorce with consent’ system also had the consideration about their ruling. These specific concerns had close relationship with the legal marriage system. Therefore, women’s status must be affected by their ruling policy undoubtedly.