You can't imagine how high the status of women in the Song Dynasty is - the free marriage chapter.
Have you been watching the hit drama "Dream Warrior" lately? The women of the Song Dynasty in the TV series can study, do business, and engage in various occupations. Not only can you teach your husband and children at home, but you can also go out and show your face and stand on your own.
In last year's hit "Qing Ping Le", we also saw that women in the Song Dynasty could not only remarry for the second time, but also become empresses after remarrying. A woman born as a singer can also be an empress and empress dowager for the second marriage, and finally run the imperial court for decades.
All this makes us very curious, how high is the status of women in the Song Dynasty? Many people say that the Song Ming Theory that binds Chinese women originated in the Song Dynasty, so the Tang Dynasty was the peak of the status of Chinese women, and the status of women gradually declined from the beginning of the Song Dynasty.
So now let's take the perspective of modern people and look back at how free women's marriages were in the Song Dynasty.
The marriage freedom of women in the Song Dynasty was not only manifested in the fact that they could go on a blind date before marriage and understand each other's property status, but more importantly, women could propose to marry, divorce, and remarry. When remarrying, you can take the dowry with you, and the list of dowries before marriage is equivalent to a notarial certificate of property. The daughter has the right to inherit property, and the property inherited by the daughter is equivalent to half of the property inherited by the son, and these rights are written into law and protected.
Seeing this, not only sighed, the status of Song women is simply higher than the status of women today!
Let's first look at the "daughter-in-law" and "common capital" of the Song Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, in addition to the usual procedures for marriage, such as Nacai, Naji, Nazheng, and Kissing, there was also an important step that was to have the practice of "marrying a daughter-in-law and exchanging funds" when discussing marriage.
"Daughter-in-law" is equivalent to our current blind date. The two sides of the man and woman agreed to meet at a time, and when they met, they were on the bun of the woman' hair, which was called "inserting the noodle". If there is no picture, the color forging is sent, which is called "pressure shock". This is much better than those pure parental orders, matchmakers, and all kinds of feudal etiquette that are not allowed to meet before marriage.
"Tongfu Cai" means that the marriage book not only states the names of both men and women, the birthday of the eight characters, but also the property status of the family. The song dynasty developed a commodity economy, people lived a wealthy life, and property status was also a very important matter in marriage.
Song Dynasty families would leave property to their daughters when they divided their family property. This is not only a social custom, but also written into the law. Property reserved for a daughter is usually called "inheritance", which means property distributed to the daughter in the name of dowry.
The daughter received half as much property as the brothers received. For example, a family has three brothers and two sisters. If the brothers were to receive 1,000 yuan each, then the daughter would each receive a dowry of 500 yuan.
Because this provision is explicitly written into the law, if the daughters are treated unfairly when they separate the family, they can take the brothers to court for the family property.
At the same time, due to the freedom of marriage in the Song Dynasty, women of the Song Dynasty could divorce and divorce. Then whether it is a divorced wife, or an active divorce, and separation, a woman's dowry can be taken away. We often see a dowry list in TV dramas, which is equivalent to today's notarization of premarital property.
The dowry is the private property of women, when divorced, the dowry should be taken away in its original number, and if it is remarried, it can also follow the woman into a new family, which is still the private property of the woman.
Due to the freedom of marriage of women and the protection of private property by law, the status of women in the Song Dynasty was very high. There are also many divorces, remarriages, and remarriages. This freedom gives women a great right to choose, and women are not dependent on men and do not depend on men to eat. Therefore, in the Song Dynasty, there were many women filing and leaving, and women filed divorce lawsuits.
Some married men in the Song Dynasty, when buying property, feared that the family would be divided up by their brothers in the future, so they added property in the name of their wives. However, when he died unexpectedly or divorced, his wife took them all away when she remarried on the grounds that these properties were in her own name.
The Song Dynasty people gradually realized that they could not do such stupid things anymore, but it also proved from another aspect that Song Dynasty women could take away their private property by remarrying, which was protected by law.
In the Song Dynasty, from the emperors and scholars, to the ordinary people, women remarried and bowed. The real chinese women's status took a sharp turn for the worse during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the ruling class began to vigorously promote the Cheng Zhu doctrine and even distort propaganda, which eventually caused disastrous consequences for women. Men can divorce their wives at will, and women can only endure. And if a woman is divorced, it is a great shame, and she cannot lift her head from then on, and it is not easy to remarry, it is a loss of chastity.
In particular, the meaning of chastity became very extreme after the Qing Dynasty, and even became a belief. Even the life of a woman and chastity are closely linked, and the virginity of the martyr is promoted to the extreme. These are the real feudal dross that we need to abandon.