고소설 속 계모의 재해석 -과 을 중심으로

Abstract

In a novel, although distinguishing virtue and vice is ethical and universal in general cases, it considerably depends on readers' subjective judgement. The judgement can be changed by readers' social concepts and atmosphere of era. Even though there are some cases that the characters who are judged as evil ones are reassessed to better ones in these days, a stepmother who hates children by a previous marriage still has been assessed completely bad man. This paper has the purpose which reinterprets 'stepmother's character in family novels of Korean traditional novels. This paper tries to change stereotypes by reconsidering why the stepmother killed children from ex-wife. The stepmother in Korean traditional novels generally describes a evil and beautiful woman. On the other hand, the children from ex-wife is emphasized with good-hearted personality. The singularity of the children from ex-wife is a extraordinary phenomenon in birth and a dream about the birth of a child. This scene in some works is the intentional device of the author to emphasize the stepmother's misdeeds with the strong exposure of the children's tragedy. And it is seemed like a fixed image as the good and the evil. There are many stepmothers appearance descriptions, among them 's writer describes stepmother Heo's ugly appearance very specifically. So, she maybe has a complex of her appearance and it makes her form bad character. Because of this labelling effect, people have preconceptions that she does something evil to the children by a previous marriage. Furthermore the family doesn't accept her as family members after giving birth to a baby. In this situation, she accumulates a complex and a sense of alienation and eventually she does something evil to explode these bad feelings. In the novel , Jeong becomes a member of family which has three children by his former wife. And, Inhyang, one of these sons, fights Jeong for leadership. in this situation she shows typical oedipus complex. Because Inhyang's position in the family is so powerful Jeong has an inferiority complex. It makes her a neurotic patient. As a result, she does something bad to protect herself-defense mechanism. For these reasons, we can conclude that most of stepmothers commit something evil. The society is cold and cruel to the second wife who has the unjust situation. They tried to appease a revengeful spirit of the children from ex-wife, but they didn't care about what she said. Rather, they punished her severely as a example by way of warning. Nevertheless, the stepmother was required to show dedication and do her duty by comparison with relatively low levels in family. The stepmother cannot break common notion that they are the evildoer since the children was killed from the trick of stepmother in the novel and there are stepmother type family novels and these will be read. But there are some reasons she couldn't help acting like that. The preconceived notion that someone is always evildoer and someday he or she will do something evil without looking before and after can make the other evildoer. Therefore, this paper wants to reinterpret figures of stepmother in traditional novels from various perspectives thinking outside the box.