The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong Essay Example

value of filial piety and does whatever she can to honor them.

For example, we hear her say “In my widowhood, I looked up to His Majesty and relied upon my father.” (Page 93). This gives us certainty that she really relies on her new family and looks up to them as if they were her own blood. Lady Hyegyong probably wrote this for her nephew to give him some background about her life, and to show that even though he might have to live in a new home with a new family (something that will be covered in the second memoir), he should be accepting of his family and practice filial piety to the strongest extent.

This writing not only gave us a look in her past, but this memoir has a different writing style than the other three that Lady Hyegyong wrote. In her first memoir, she seems to express a lot of emotion rather than give the facts about what happened. Lady Hyegyong fills the memoir with a lot of personal opinions and feelings in contrast to what actually happened. Her filial piety for her father is so strong, that we might say that there is probably a lot of bias when this memoir was written. Lady Hyegyong’s second memoir was written 6 years later, addressing similar issues while trying to speak out to a different audience.

In this memoir, Lady Hyegyong proceeds to write about how she wanted to clear the names of her brother and uncle. At the time, Lady Hyegyong’s biological brother and uncle were under some harsh accusations of their own. Lady Hyegyong’s brother was accused of practicing Catholicism and her

uncle was accused of being disloyal to the royal family. Although the audience of Lady Hyegyong’s second memoir isn’t very clear, it is safe to assume that it was meant to be written for the general public as a political tactic.

When Lady Hyegyong was trying to clear the names of her brother, she found out some things about the Joseon court and how they could possibly be corrupted as factionalism was around at the time. Lady Hyegyong probably wrote this memoir to raise public awareness of the corruption that could have been going on in the Joseon court at the time. Not only that, but it would also give her some exposure about how devoted she was to filial piety as she fought relentlessly to clear the name for her brother and uncle, only to have them executed in the end despite all her hard work.

Lady Hyegyong also probably wanted her grandson to be aware of the events that happened to her brother and uncle so that he doesn’t make the same mistakes as she says “My uncle’s case was truly unjust. I await the day when the present King, my grandson, matures and learns to discern right and wrong.” (Page 165). As opposed to the other memoirs that Lady Hyegyong wrote, this one gives off a very political vibe to it.

The other memoirs involve her life story with some personal feeling mixed in, but this one includes all of that but on a political scale. Since this memoir of Lady Hyegyong’s wasn’t personally directed towards anymore, it would seem that she has no other motive than the public to write this memoir for. The

third memoir was written just a year later in 1802 by Lady Hyegyong. This memoir had a strong focus on Lady Hyegyong’s son Jeongjo, and everything he did to fight for his family’s name as well as the impact of Crown Prince Sado had on his family.

Lady Hyegyong’s son Jeongjo has a hard time dealing with his father Crown Prince Sado’s death at first. Even the king Yeongjo had a rough time with this despite it being his decision to execute Crown Prince Sado. We know King Jeongjo has remorse as Lady Hyegyong says, “As this was the truth, one must say that His majesty’s decision was made under irresistible pressures, that prince Sado could not have been helped, and that the late King knew his duty even as he suffered deep grief.” (Page 217). Despite all this, Jeongjo had the dream and passion to restore the name of his family after all that has happened. Even after Jeongjo’s father died, he still a strong sense of filial piety for his father Crown Prince Sado.

Jeongjo was very dedicated to his family and was against all the corruption and factionalism that was going on at the time. Unfortunately for Jeongjo, he died before his true dream of restoring filial piety in his family’s name could have been achieved. One of the reasons that Lady Hyegyong decides to write this part was to give the reader her perspective of her son’s life as she saw it. From this memoir that Lady Hyegyong wrote, we see that she sees her son in a light that shows that Jeongjo instills a strong filial piety moral rather than using this

story for political means like the last memoir. This memoir also feels more somber, as the hardship caused from Crown Prince Sado’s death are heavily covered.

Lady Hyegyong writes this to her grandson Sunjo, so that hopefully that he will be able to carry on Jeongjo’s plan of restoring the name of their family. The tone that Lady Hyegyong takes in this memoir is very serious, but somehow, she still manages to capture that essence of filial piety that she saw embedded in her son Jeongjo. Lady Hyegyong really looked up to her son Jeongjo and trusted that he would do good for his family name. Even though Jeongjo wasn’t able to fulfill his goal, she writes this as strong motivation for her grandson Sunjo without being too biased like we have seen in previous entries.

Lady Hyegyong wrote her final memoir in 1805, three years after the last one. In this memoir, which may be the most important memoir that Lady Hyegyong wrote, we finally get a look into what happened to Crown prince Sato and what brought him to execution (which is also known as the “1762 incident”). Without this memoir that Lady Hyegyong wrote, everything that happened on that day was all speculation, including all of Crown Prince Sado’s crimes. After all, Lady Hyegyong was the last person alive that witnessed Crown Prince Sado’s execution firsthand. Not only that, we get to hear about what life was like for Lady Hyegyong being married to Crown Prince Sado and what drove the Crown Prince to his madness.

Lady Hyegyong described life initially with Crown Prince Sado as peaceful and says he was a very intelligent man.

As time went on, however, Crown Prince Sado’s actions started to change as he grew farther apart from his father King Yeongjo. Some speculate that this distancing between Crown Prince Sado and his father King Yeongjo is the reasons that Crown Prince Sado dove into a state of madness and pure violence. He started to do things such as abuse, rape, or even murder any of his servants that displeased him.

Lady Hyegyong didn’t come to light about the subject until she walked in on Crown Prince Sado beheading one of his servants. Despite all of this, Crown prince Sado was never violent to Lady Hyegyong in this manner. There was only one instance that Crown Prince Sado hurt Lady Hyegyong and that was when they were playing a game of go. Crown Prince Sado threw the go board at Lady Hyegyong, injuring her eye. King Yeongjo eventually got wind of the situation and confronted Crown Prince Sado about his actions. He was left off the hook for now but was brought back in after a rumor going around was heard by King Yeongjo that Crown Prince Sado was going to kill his father.

Crown prince Sado was brought back in again by King Yeongjo after this and was sentenced to death and put in the rice chest where he would die. The true reason that Lady Hyegyong wrote this was that she felt like the public was owed an explanation of what happened that day. That day was left unexplained for so long that Lady Hyegyong knew that the only way that anyone else was going to find out about that day was until she spoke

up and wrote something pertaining to the events that day, and what ultimately lead up to it. Not only did Lady Hyegyong want the public to know about what went on, but she also wanted her grandson Sunjo to what happened to his grandfather. Not only that, Lady Hyegyong goes into detail about why Crown prince Sado’s execution was so different from other executions at the time.

Crown Prince Sado was not tried as a criminal at the time, he was tried as a member of the royal family. This was part of the reason Crown Prince Sado was sentenced to the rice chest to die rather than a traditional execution. If Crown Prince Sado was tried and executed as a criminal, it would have ruined the family name and brought shame and misfortune to the family line for generations to come. If Lady Hyegyong killed herself in the result of Crown Prince Sado’s death, it would have brought more suspicion to light about the vent and would have made Crown Prince Sado seem even more guilty than before.

In addition to this, the public would have probably been notified of the execution after it happened. Lady Hyegyong and her son would have probably been killed after the execution of Crown Prince Sado in addition to that. In the end, the execution was done as silently as possible to make sure the family line reined pure, but Lady Hyegyong decided that this event should not go unnoticed, despite the repercussions. The king Yeongjo went as far as calming that Lady Hyegyong’s son, Jeongjo was Sado’s nephew so that he could live a life without facing the backlash

of his father’s madness.

In the memoir, Lady Hyegyong tells the facts how they are, without holding anything back and only sprinkling a little emotion into it. She really wants to end everything on a high note and just tells the story exactly how it is. Throughout all four memoirs that we have seen Lady Hyegyong write, we have seen some progression in her writing style and how she writes them. In the first memoir, we see that Lady Hyegyong strays away from the facts and fills it with mostly emotion and bias. In the second memoir, Lady Hyegyong puts a little less emotion in her text and focuses on some facts but in the end was all for the public and to stir political drama.

Lady Hyegyong’s third memoir feels a little more serious as she is trying to make things right, but still can’t help but get slightly biased since she is talking about her son. In the last memoir, she puts nothing but the cold-hearted facts while trying to avoid as much emotion and bias as possible. As different as all four of Lady Hyegyong’s memoirs are they all seem to have one central theme, which is filial piety. The main reason Lady Hyegyong decides to write these is to show that her and her family line heavily practice filial piety and will do anything for each other no matter what.

Throughout the whole story, the feeling of filial piety was very strong, and I feel like it’s a perfect way to sum up Lady Hyegyong’s memoirs. Each one tried to reach out to a certain member in Lady Hyegyong’s family to show that the

family line truly embraces filial piety and that they should not let this die out. As observed, Lady Hyegyong wrote each part to tailor to a different kind of audience.

Each one reach out to a difference audience while preserving a specific tone to cater that intended audience. Without Lady Hyegyong’s memoirs, a large chunk of history would have gone missing, and it’s hard to say that anyone would even know Lady Hyegyong or her stories of what happened during her life and that very fateful day.