Filial daughters-in-law: Questioning Confucian filiality
The passages about the sage-king Shun’s filiality in the Mencius sometimes remind me of the melodramatic stereotype of the filial daughter-in-law in the Hong Kong soap operas of the 1960s and 1970s.1 The heroine was usually beautiful and always virtuous. Her lot in life was a series of misfortunes and...
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| Format: | text |
| Language: | English |
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Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
2004
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| Online Access: | https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2603 |
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| Institution: | Singapore Management University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | The passages about the sage-king Shun’s filiality in the Mencius sometimes remind me of the melodramatic stereotype of the filial daughter-in-law in the Hong Kong soap operas of the 1960s and 1970s.1 The heroine was usually beautiful and always virtuous. Her lot in life was a series of misfortunes and injustices, which she faced with tear-wrenching courage. Throughout her trials and tribulations, she remained the ever-faithful wife to her husband, loving mother to her children, caring sister-in-law to her husband’s siblings, and filial to her parents-in-law. Her filiality never wavered even when, as often happened, she was confronted with a shrewish, abusive, or downright vicious mother-in-law. |
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