Women on the Borders of the Ladies’ Quarters and the Ginyeo House: The Mixed Self-Consciousness of Ginyeo in Late Joseon

As both a government slave and an entertainer for the court and the upper class, the ginyeo was a liminal being who belonged neither to the cultural center nor the periphery. Besides serving the national interest with her artistic accomplishments as a yeoak (female court artist), her duties were to provide the men of the yangban (aristocratic) class with a medium of social life and sexual pleasure. However, by the late Joseon period, the image of the chaste lady started to define the dominant representation of the ginyeo. 'Virtuous ginyeo' who seemed to possess the self-consciousness of the yangban class began to appear. This chaste ginyeo has been admired as a paragon of Confucian virtue. This new icon of the 'virtuous ginyeo' not only shows that Confucian hegemony had spread to the sphere of everyday life, but also presents a sexual double standard for women of this social class. In particular, the mixed self-consciousness of 'virtuous ginyeo' is a historical index of the liminality of the ginyeo maximized at the point where the formula of desire intersects the dual functioning of gender in Joseon society. Furthermore, the formation of the 'virtuous ginyeo' in the late Joseon shows how female sexuality was reconstructed in the premodern social context. Reprinted by permission of Korean National Commission for UNESCO