—Seoul, Korea. 17th century.

Stealing

And what would she steal? Everything she needed was provided. She had fine white linen clothes for everyday wear, silks in a garden of hues for feast days. Her sleeping mat was woven of the finest bamboo; a lacquer chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl held her few personal belongings. Her hair pins were studded with jade or pearls; her bracelets cast of silver so pure and soft they could be bent to fit her wrist perfectly.

Of food, she lacked nothing. She had only to ask, and a servant would be immediately dispatched to the marketplace for more sweet bean-paste, more salted fish roe. Or her favorite— the freshest green shoots of woodland ferns, still curled in their newness.

Talkativeness

She had been raised by honorable parents. Her mother especially had brought her up knowing in her very blood that the charms of a woman should be neither seen nor heard, hidden from all except the man who provided for her.

Responses in a low voice, eyes cast down, only essential words. Questions, if absolutely necessary, in the same pose. And if one could not swallow a laugh before it emerged, one's hand was lifted to cover the immodest sight of a woman's teeth.

More than a few words in a row, she had not spoken to a man since childhood.

Disobedience to in-laws

Although there were more servants than family in the house, it was her duty to prepare her husband's food, clothing, comfort. He was the eldest son of the eldest son. It was her mother-in- law's duty to look after his interests.

The soup was not hot enough, or lacked flavor. The seams on his jacket were not straight. The blankets for his bed were not aired long enough in the morning. The next day, she left them out longer. Then she was lazy, an idler who did not tidy her husband's room in time. It was her mother-in-law's duty to be displeased with all that she did.

She did not even need to hold her tongue, for her vocabulary did not hold words of disrespect for a mother-in-law. And she called the older woman 'omoni'— mother. It was no longer correct to call her own mother by that name; once a woman married, she belonged to the family of her husband. How else would it be?

Jealousy

On the third day of every week, her husband would stay out all night. At the palace? in a bar with the singing and dancing girls? It was not her place to ask. When he came back the next day, he would look at her with disdain, and that night, he would not visit her room.

At first, his curt glances had cut her like a hot knife. She had kept her feelings hidden in the darkest corner of her mind, and slowly grew accustomed to the weekly absences, to the coldness that followed. The following night, he would come again to her room, everything as it had always been...until the next week.

His act gave her days a rhythm, for which she was grateful. Else all the days would feel the same.

Adultery

At the age of fourteen, she had been carried in a covered sedan chair from her father's house to her husband's. In neither place was she allowed to set foot outside the Inner Court. The only men she ever saw from outside the family were the servants— dour and oily-faced most of them, whose eyes never met hers, as was proper. She lacked not only opportunity; she lacked even the idea of the possibility.

Her husband was not an adulterer; it was his right to have a mistress. The very word adultery applied only to women.

Illness

She shrugged, fatalistic. If the gods chose to strike her down, there was little she could do to prevent it. True, she followed custom. She drank a tonic of tiger-bone each morning, and another of deer-horn in the evening. When the smallpox demon visited the neighborhood, she and all the household spoke only in whispers and crept silently about the house for three weeks; noise might draw the demon's attention. And it was she who told her husband about the careless maidservant who had dropped a pot lid and put them all in peril.

The maidservant was fired at once. As was proper.

Seven transgressions that Confucian law deemed just cause for divorce. Seven reasons he could throw her out onto the street, secure in the knowledge that he was doing the correct thing. The first five were simply not possible for her to commit, while illness, should it strike, was not possible for her to avoid. Of the seven, there was only one that she feared.

Inability to produce a male heir

Every month, she waited and prayed to the gods and to the ancestors. Every month, when the bright blood showed on the cotton rags, she wept and cursed in private until her whole face tasted of salt.

And when at last, there was no scarlet stain as the days passed, when she knew there was a life in her that was not her own, her prayers changed.

She prayed long and hard that it not be a girl. But if the gods should find her so contemptible... if she should fail in this paramount duty...if it were indeed a girl...

Then let it die before it was born.

© Linda Sue Park