Bibliography

[the_lady_lily]

The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea - JaHyun Kim Haboush

These are amazing. Lady Hyegyong was a royal princess married to the crown prince in 18th century in the royal household of Korea. Late in her life, she wrote four memoirs of her life; they are dated 1795, 1801, 1802 and 1805. Each memoir has a different purpose - the first is a fairly conventional autobiography in the appropriate genre as inspirational literature for her descendants, telling the story of her marriage into the court and her subsequent life. The second is a defense of her brother and uncle, accused of treason and executed, as an attempt for their memory to be cleared. The third performs a similar defense of her father. The fourth - oh, the fourth - tells the story of her marriage to Prince Sado, his descent into madness, and his eventual death.

The first memoir is fascinating for its insight into the expectations of a royal bride, her inclusion in court ceremonial at such a young age, how she learnt to fit into her role. The second and third memoirs give insight into the kind of manipulation and politics that went on behind the scenes, and how little power one could actually wield in these situations. But it's the fourth memoir that gets you most, because it's the only one in which Lady Hyegyong talks about her husband's behaviour. She discusses it with a cool, calm detachment that almost belies the sheer horror of what she had to live with, and explicitly says she isn't mentioning things that are too painful to mention. Given what she does mention, I dread to think what she has left out.

Prince Sado was clearly very mentally ill. The best example of this is what Lady Hyegyong calls his 'clothes phobia' - he would need twenty or thirty suits of clothing set out, of which some would be burnt, some destroyed by other means, before he could find a set he could put on; if something went wrong when he was putting them on, he would have to take them off again, often lashing out violently at anyone attending him. Relieved at getting into clothes, he would stay in them until they disintegrated. The violence of his reactions was so extreme that he beat his concubine, mother of two of his children, to death as she attended him at the dressing ritual.

He also killed eunuchs and ladies-in-waiting for no apparent reason, and for what I hope are quite clear reasons, Lady Hyegyong lived in fear for her life and that of her son, especially when the King started to favour his grandson over his son.

Lady Hyegyong paints a nuanced picture of this relationship - it is not the fault of Prince Sado, for he was greviously sick; it is not the fault of the parents alone, although the King could have paid more attention to Sado's upbringing when he was a child. However, it eventually became clear that Prince Sado's illness was so extreme that he posed severe danger to the monarchy and the state. The King summoned him to an audience, stripped him of his royal rank, made him climb into a rice chest, sealed him in there, and left him to die.

When he died, the King restored his royal rank to some degree, but this incident left its blight upon the household, and Lady Hyegyong had to live with the consequences of it for her and her whole family for the rest of her life. The amazing thing is that until you read the Memoir of 1805, there is a silence about precisely how ill Prince Sado was. You construct domestic violence and things like the clothes phobia fairly easily - but the Memoir of 1805 is the first one to mention that Prince Sado killed innocent people around him. It is a genuine shock, and honestly seems to have been erased out of the story surrounding this incident until this memoir was written. There are obvious reasons for this, mainly how one talks about the father of the current king being a homicidal murderer in a tactful fashion, but - just - oh. You feel for Lady Hyegyong - trying to protect her husband from his father's wrath, hiding the extent of his illness, living in fear of her own life and that of her son - and then having to face the politicking that came about after his death.

These memoirs are well worth reading, especially in this edition, which has a good introduction and very helpful notes. It's also nice to spend some time in Korea, as opposed to China or Japan, which tend to get a bit more attention.

Comments

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Oh! I haven't read the memoir, but I've read Margaret Drabble's substandard fictionalisation of it, called The Red Queen. Even squeezed into a derivative past-and-present story about a middle class academic at a conference in Korea who identifies with Lady Hyegyong, Hyegyong's story still struck me - and some of the details, like the rice chest, have stayed with me. I made a note at the time to look up the memoir, and this has reminded me to do so - thankyou :)

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

It was The Red Queen (http://the-lady-lily.livejournal.com/356031.html#cutid1) that put this on the reading list in the first place for me as well - so at least substandard fiction had a use!

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

That sounds like quite an fantastic and moving memoir, I really would like to read it at some point. (At this point, it's probably going to end up on the very long "when I'm immortal" booklist...)

Was her first memoir written in 1775?

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

Whoops - no, 1795 actually, hence the number swap, now corrected :)

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks. I did think there would have been quite a gap involved otherwise, but that's not impossible (especially if the first one had been written shortly after some of the more traumatic events, a gap might have been...diplomatic).