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David Golombek\\
21F.030\\
Journal \#4\\\\
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Lady Hyegyong is faced with a set of challenging issues in her life as
the wife of the heir-apparent and later as the unofficial mother of the
king, and the choices that she must make are not comfortably decided
by the Confucian ethics that she follows.  Indeed, several of these
Confucian ethics seem to come into direct conflict, because she is
pulled by both the desire to be loyal to her husband, and thus commit
suicide, and also to be loyal to her son, and thus stay alive and
support him in any way possible.  The interesting result of these two
conflicting demands on her life is that Lady Hyegyong essentially
follows a third path, one much more typically expected of men, that of
duty to the entire family.  She chooses to live, and also to write the
diaries that we read, in order to try to restore the honor of her late
husband, father, and other family members.

Lady Hyegyong's choices are particularly challenging because there
seem to be so many clear cut requirements on her life, placed there by
differing parts of the same Confucian code.  This is a typical result
of moral codes that attempt to rule a persons life; in their attempt
to provide leadership in all parts of life, they frequently provide
multiple demands on a person simultaneously.  In the case of
Confucianism, and in particular of requirements of filial, paternal,
and regal royalty, the demands placed by each of these elements may
not be complimentary, leaving the follower in a bad situation.  Lady
Hyegyong deals with this dilemma as best she can, in a manner that I
find fully supportable.  Despite the obvious sacrifices involved in
her committing suicide after her husband's death, this is actually the
easy way out of the situation for Lady Hyegyong.  By simply following
her husband into death, she could appease many of the demands placed
on her, and end the conflict over her correct course of action.
Instead, Lady Hyegyong takes what I see to be the much braver route,
choosing to attempt to restore honor to her family, which takes
concerted (and probably very painful) effort over a great many years,
by writing the diaries that we read.  

Placed in Lady Hyegyong's shoes, I'd like to think that I would take
the same route as she did, or at least one very similar.  Although
killing myself after the death of my husband (wife?) would be an
tempting release from responsibility, it is inherently a solution that
solves nothing, unless my death would serve to get a point across in a
way that no other action could match.  In this situation, suicide was
an entirely non-constructive solution, and thus not a proper course of
action.  The most constructive way of resolving the charges against
my husband and father would be to present a proof that their actions
were logical, or not their fault.  Since proper proof of this was
impossible to obtain, a written explanation would be the best
remaining alternative.  Thus, using my own modern morals, which are
distinctly non-Confucian, I come to the same course of action as Lady
Hyegyong did.  I find this both interesting and amusing; interesting
in that I'm impressed a woman of her time period could act so
logically (by my standards) given the low level of formal education
she had probably received, and amusing, since she probably came to her
decision by a very different train of thought.

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