Money, Sex, and Children:A Study on the Familial relationship in the “Jin Ping Mei”

• Main Authors: Hsiao-Wan Chang, 張筱婉
• Other Authors: 詹海雲
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/16206149479514418376

碩士 === 元智大學 === 中國語文學系 === 98 === The thesis aims to interpret and describe the familial relationships depicted in the book, the “Jin Ping Mei”, through exploring and examining the text, (I)The thesis first attempts to explore how the prevalence of a product culture in late Ming society had led to a transforming the characters’ relationships in the family structure, and to describe the correlation that the author of the “Jin Ping Mei” attempted to express in the familial relationships. By focusing also on elements contributing to the nuptial relationship that bound the husband and wife in the familial relationship of the “Jin Ping Mei”, the thesis also attempts to establish the typical phenomenon by which the nuptial relationship was formed in the novel by summarizing the three doctrines, economies and lust for beauty, and in turn to discern how Ximen Qing’s family life was formed in the “Jin Ping Mei”. (II)By discerning how the author of the “Jin Ping Mei” created and shaped the images of the husband, the wife and the concubine throughout the book, the thesis attempts to summarize and sort out the bright characters reflected in image of the husband and the images of the wife and the concubine as the scope of discussion. It also attempts to explore the creation of the images of the husband, wife and concubine to extract the characteristics of the familial relationship and the unique phenomenon of the entrepreneurial-spirited familial relationship in that the author’s writing mode on Ximen Qing broaching from a scholar’s viewpoint was changed into that broaching from an social and commercial angle to result in characters indulging in the whimsy of sexual pleasure, and reflecting a merchant’s economic and business personality attributes. Consequently, by focusing on how the feminine image of the wife and the concubine evolving through the background of the time in the social development had led to an evolvement in the thinking culture, and how the attributes projected by the roles of the two in the contest of familial relationship provided a glimpse to the intrinsic characteristics of common households in the Ming dynasty. (III)Through the author’s narration of the characters in the novel, the thesis derives the fundamental elements of love and familial tie that binds the emotional tie in a familial relationship. While the “Jin Ping Mei” might long been perceived as a writing focusing on the physical pleasure, and yet when stripping the pornographic writing from the “Jin Ping Mei”, the author had weaved the story around Ximen Qing’s family, and applied the traditional Chinese family concept to map out how the traces of emotion had been developed in Ximen Qing’s familial relationship. 　　Lastly, the thesis focuses on how the unique common merchant culture triggered by the economic development in the Ming period had witnessed the unique period of a social transformation, and in turn changed and loosened the traditional Chinese family structure. With the author of the “Jin Ping Mei” remained a mystery, the writing somewhat revealed his life experiences and projected a microscopic take of the time.