女無外事？—墓誌碑銘中所見之北宋士大夫社會秩序理念

WITHIN THE HOME The Depiction of "Model Women" in the Epitaphs of the Northern Sung

劉靜真(Ching-cheng Liu)

《婦女與兩性學刊》 4期 (1993/03) Pp. 21-46

https://doi.org/10.6255/JWGS.1993.4.21

摘要

正位於內，可以說是傳統中國定位婦女角色地位的基本理念，但是究竟應該如何在生活中體現，則往往在解釋與應用上，因人、因時、因地、因事而有不同。
墓誌碑銘原有濃厚的傳記意味，但是銘文的撰寫旣爲念懷死者而起，其中隱諱、渲染之處自是難免；唯此種隱諱與渲染固然帶來史料解讀上的某種困擾，卻也讓我們得以窺知誌銘作者與同時代人所堅持的社會秩序理想，並其與現實生活間的矛盾與衝突。
北宋士大夫在爲婦女撰寫誌銘時，不約而同地從她們爲人女、爲人婦、爲人妻、爲人母的身份來勾勒其一生行止，塑造出幾近一式的「無外事」形象，一方面是源於現實社會在古來「女正位乎內」的價值理念誘導下，不讓婦女參與外事，令誌銘作者非但無外事可記，有時甚且無事可記。而在另一方面，作者本身也因認同「婦人無外事」的理念規範而自我設限，盡量地不記外事；或是在不得已的情況下，將相對的「家事」概念擴大解釋，使一些爲因應宋代社會經濟狀況，不得不出外營產治生的婦女亦不違「正位於內」的「天地之大義」。至於有些實在無法納入家事範疇的佳行懿德，就只有越過婦事的層次，與男子相提並論，從根本上避開內、外的問題。

關鍵字

北宋 ； 士大夫 ； 婦女 ； 墓誌碑銘 ； 正位於內 ； 家事

並列摘要

In the Confucian world order, women were supposed to live within the home (Nyu cheng wei hu nei), but this ”ideal” was hard to practice in daily life. This was a conflict that confronted Sung literati in the writing of funerary inscriptions. Compared to the biographies of women in the official dynastic histories and instruction books, funerary inscriptions were relatively informative, however, they too were limited, perhaps by their very nature. Because these inscriptions were written as memorials, a great number of epitaphs exaggerated or were otherwise untrue. But becarse of this, we can assume that the authors only wrote what they thought good and proper, or what would be recongnized as a fit way to honor the deceased. So from what was written, we can perceive the authors' ideal rather than the reality or truth.
Since these epitaphs were a kind of biography, why did the authors depict women, who had lived extremely varied lives, as having lived in one idealized way-that is, within the home? One reason is that in real life many women really did follow the lessons of the classics and stayed within the home. Of these women, there was very little else to comment on. But even about women who had various business activities outside the home, the literati only emphasized that which could be connected with household affairs, in order to maintain the ”first principle of heaven” -that women should have no business with the outside world (Fujen wu wai shih). As for women who were greatly successful or achieved renown outside the home, and who could not be credited as being exemplary when it came to household affairs - they were compared with men or even treated as if they were men, in their epitaphs, This was done to avoid the embarrassment that these women did not stay within the home, the ”proper” place for women. In effcet, these women were able to transcend the level of the ordinary woman and were deemed worthy to be compared to men. Ironically, this seems the highest praise that a woman could achieve in traditional China.

並列關鍵字

Northern Sung ； literati ； woman ； epitaph ； household affairs