Week 3 Analysis: A close reading of The Song of Ch'un-Hyang

“The Song of Ch’un-Hyang” (74-89)

One passage that stuck out to me is: “I will draw blood from my veins and paint a portrait of my lord. Hang it as a scroll beside my door, and see it when I go out and in. Because I am chaste and faithful I have been treated thus cruelly: Like fine white jade of Jingshan buried in the dust. Like fragrant plants of Shangshan buried in the weeds, like a phoenix that played in paulownias making its nest in a thorn-patch…” (89). This passage stuck out to me because I found it to be rather beautiful in the words used like: “draw blood from my veins”. It makes the feeling one gets from the passage to be rather personal and intoxicating by stating she will go as far as to take her own blood. I also find her sadness and pain to stand out in this passage by the use of words like “thorn-patch” and buried”. It creates this heaviness to the emotions she expresses. In reading this passage, there is a connection to Confucianism and a communication of a commoner woman’s suffering and her views.

 In dissecting this passage, I have discovered that I get the feeling of longing, pain and confusion. This is because she talks about yearning for her lover to the point that she will draw blood and paint a portrait of him so she can at least see him. I get the feeling of pain from the fact that she makes comparisons in the form of a simile in describing how cruelly she is being treated. One such example of a simile is: “Like fine white jade of Jingshan buried in the dust” (89). In this phrase, she is stating that she feels like they are just throwing her away in the dust when she does not belong there.  I get the feeling of confusion in the fact that she questions why she is being treated cruelly when she has done absolutely nothing wrong. This confusion can be found in words like: “Because I am chaste and faithful I have been treated thus cruelly” (89). She does not understand why she would be treated in such a horrible way when she has stuck to Confucianism ideals for woman: duty towards one husband.

In the author using Confucianism, we readers get this connection to the character Ch’un-Hyang. This is because we dive down deep into the Korean genre of music storytelling, P’ansori. In P’ansori, we get this communal act that gives the audience (or readers) a connection to a commoner’s life and are typically taught something. In this case, we are being taught the lesson of a woman’s duty and confusion in being punished. For example, like how she is being treated for being faithful to her man. She is absolutely confused for why she would be treated so cruelly when she did what was ideal and follow the duty she has towards a husband, in her case; remaining faithful and chaste until he comes back from Seoul. In general, I think this passage is meant to link to the text’s purpose of elaborating in the Confucian ideals and the wrong treatment of a common woman.

"The Song of Ch’un-Hyang". The Norton Anthology World Literature, Third Edition, Vol. D. Martin Puchner. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pages 74-89. Fairfield Medium with the display set in Aperto.