It can be said that such a noble and versatile girl as Cui Yingying is almost perfect. But as a result, she failed to get married and stayed at home.
We can't help asking, how did a young girl of 19 become a leftover woman in her prime?
It is necessary to know "Is Cui Yingying a young girl or an old woman?" This problem should start with the official decrees on the age of marriage in previous dynasties.
The book directly says that the background of The West Chamber is the Tang Dynasty. So what was the legal age of marriage for young men and women in the Tang Dynasty? This is also slightly different with different periods.
In the early Tang Dynasty, just after the war, the country was unified and stable again. Due to the need of recuperation, the law relaxed the marriage age for young men and women. The law stipulates that men get married at the age of 20 and women 15.
During the Xuanzong period in the middle Tang Dynasty, after the Anshi Rebellion, the government began to lower the marriage age of young men and women because of the sharp drop in population caused by the war. According to the law, the age of marriage for men is 65,438+05, and that for women is 65,438+03.
The Anshi Rebellion is a great event in history, especially in the history of the Tang Dynasty. More information about it is reflected in Hong Sheng's play The Palace of Eternal Life. I won't mention it here.
In several dynasties after Xuanzong, such as Song Dynasty and Qing Dynasty, the marriage age of young men and women was 16 years old for men and 14 years old for women.
Generally speaking, the age at which girls get married is 13- 15, or 15. When the law is relaxed, it is generally 13- 14 years old.
What is this concept? Today is the connecting stage from primary school to junior high school, and some minors are extremely ignorant. Therefore, women in feudal society lived only to meet the needs of production. Without social status, their fate is indeed tragic.
Then let's ask, since the marriage age stipulated by law is so small, if the parties and their parents are unwilling or unwilling, can they not arrange marriage at the stipulated marriage age?
This is really unacceptable. Otherwise, the problem is quite serious.
In order to prevent this phenomenon, the government has also formulated corresponding restrictive laws and regulations. If there is a phenomenon that men and women don't get married over the age stipulated by laws and regulations, the government will directly intervene, and parents will be directly convicted and even risk being beheaded.
Therefore, it is a great event for young men and women to get married, which has been the case since ancient times.
The Yuan Dynasty is a special case, mainly because the Yuan Dynasty was ruled by Mongolian minorities, and the rulers were less influenced by Confucian orthodoxy and did not care much about the marriage age of young men and women, so there was no restriction on the marriage age of young men and women. It is normal for girls to get married in their twenties.
Both the prototype of the legendary novel Yingying Biography and the drama The West Chamber adapted by Wang Shifu are set in the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, the age limit for marriage in the Tang Dynasty is a reference standard.
However, because The Romance of the West Chamber was written in the Yuan Dynasty, and the author Wang Shifu was from the Yuan Dynasty, influenced by the social concept of the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Shifu changed the age of Cui Yingying in the prototype of Yingying Biography from 17 to 19, which was more in line with the acceptance of the Yuan Dynasty. In this way, the marriage age limit in Yuan Dynasty is a reference standard.
Cui's daughter, 19 years old. According to the standards of the Yuan Dynasty, of course she was a girl.
However, Cui Yingying's 65,438+09 years old is incredible by the standards of the Tang Dynasty, and Miss Cui has become a typical older woman.
On this issue, there is a feeling of time and space crossing. The epochal nature of the Yuan Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty has already appeared, and this phenomenon will also appear in the back of The West Chamber.
Although it is acceptable that 19-year-old Cui Yingying didn't get married according to the standards of the Yuan Dynasty, what happened in the book happened in the Tang Dynasty after all, so we have to explain why Cui Yingying, an older woman, didn't get married according to the standards of the Tang Dynasty.
Cui Furen said that Cui Yingying was not married because of his father's death, but was verbally engaged to Zheng Heng, Cui Furen's maiden nephew and Zheng Shangshu's eldest son. Cui Yingying and Dai Xiao got married when the time limit for mourning their father expired.
This explanation is a bit far-fetched, not to mention the revised age is 19 years. Even the age of 17 in the prototype novel is still 3 or 4 years beyond the legal requirement. We know that the laws after Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty stipulated that the marriage age of girls was 13- 14.
Anyway, as the protagonist of this book, Cui Yingying, no matter according to the standards of Yuan Dynasty or Tang Dynasty, Cui Yingying must attach great importance to his marriage. After all, now is the age to get married. After all, it was time for girls to fall in love years ago.
"Which girl doesn't love spring and which boy doesn't." Goethe said in the book Young Werther. The biggest worry for girls who marry late is thinking about getting married, especially thinking about marrying their favorite husband.
Of course, so is our Miss Cui Yingying.
As a girl who got married a few years later than the legal age, Cui Yingying obviously has her own views and ideas about her marriage problems and marriage partners.
Unfortunately, in those days, not to mention a big family, even a small family and a child's marriage were all "parents' orders and matchmakers' words", and the parties had no right to speak at all. The final situation can only be "marry a chicken with a chicken, marry a dog with a dog." So are men.
Although engaged, Cui Yingying is very dissatisfied with the engaged person. The phrase "there are thousands of worries, no words to complain about the east wind" tells the girl's heart.
Complain! Who does Cui Yingying blame? What does Cui Yingying complain about?
Is it because the east wind blew down the floating flowers? Orphans and widows are stranded in the temple, and everything is helpless. Because the marriage is involuntary, are you dissatisfied with your fiance Zheng Heng? Or do you complain that time flies so fast that you have become a leftover woman of 19 years old, or have not found a suitable man?
Perhaps, neither; Maybe, both.
The word "resentment" is a summary of Cui Yingying's life and psychological state.
It is also because of a word "resentment" that we entered Cui Yingying's heart, understood her thoughts and understood her future behavior.
Reading the West Chamber Series: 1.0.2