imports.) The only Western image which pleased me was a lacquered portrait of a royal mother and child, painted on gold-dusted wood and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I liked this image of maternity, and I approved of the power invested in the mother figure.
I do not deny that we had our own atrocities. We had our decapitations and our castrations. But we did not celebrate them in art. Our aesthetic was fastidious. Our court art may have lacked the art of perspective, but it was refined and it was delicate. It did not portray gross carnal acts or crude painted idols. It was an art of flowers and fish and birds and butterflies and blossoms.
I was brought up in much bodily ignorance, and I dreaded the moment of consummation. I dreaded failure and rejection. Princesses who failed to conceive were often condemned to a hard and lonely life. As my fifteenth birthday approached, my mother and my aunt had tried to tell me the rituals of the marriage bed, and our slave Pongnyŏ and my wet nurse Aji had whispered and giggled and sniggered about these secret female matters to me. My mother told me my duty, and told me that it would be fulfilled if I were to submit silently to the act, and to continue to respect my husband. My mother respected my father. I had been witness to this. I knew my duty. It was my duty to conceive and to bear an heir. My small, soft, nubile body within its cocoon of silk and brocade was a sacred vessel, and it must be filled with the royal sperm and bring forth a son. The body of my husband in those early days was as shiny and smooth and yellow as a grub. What a dreadful metamorphosis awaited us both!
I think Prince Sado feared the event as much as I. Already he lived in fear of his father – not the violent terror of his later adult years, but an anxious, fretting, nagging fear of failure. His father’s admonitory spirit accompanied us to the marriage bed. But we performed our duty to the satisfaction of all, and I duly conceived and bore my first son, to the rejoicing of the court and, I am told, the common people – though who can tell what the common people think or feel? They may have nourished hatred rather than joy. I never saw the common people living their common life. I glimpsed them through the curtains of my palanquin when I was sixty years of age, as they lined the roads of my royal progress, and I was curious about them. But it was too late. Too late.
The act of sex seems to give pleasure to most men, and they seek it, sometimes to their peril. My father-in-law the king had more than one wife: this was his duty. (His first wife and primary consort, Queen Chŏngsŏng, one of the three Gracious Majesties who loomed over my marriage bed, was childless.) But I think the fact that he took a young consort quite late in life, and a young consort of a lower caste who bore children who were the age of our children, was deeply unsettling to Prince Sado. (Sado was very attached to the childless Queen Chŏngsŏng, his stepmother, who always took his part.) It must have seemed to Prince Sado that his father would live and procreate and dominate and criticize his son for ever. He would never be free of his father. This is what he must have thought. And he was right.
Prince Sado, after our marriage, took secondary wives and concubines, as was customary, and he also lay with nuns and prostitutes, which cannot have been his duty. It is even said that he slept with his younger sister, Madame Chŏng, the favoured daughter of their father. It may have been so. Certainly their relationship was unnaturally intense, and some of the events towards the end of Sado’s life might best be explained by such an involvement. But the rumour of incest may have been a malicious fabrication, like the story of fratricide. Such stories are common in royal circles, in all countries. It was clear that this sister hated me, but she had many other reasons to hate me. All I wish to say in this context is that the act of marital sex gave
I do not deny that we had our own atrocities. We had our decapitations and our castrations. But we did not celebrate them in art. Our aesthetic was fastidious. Our court art may have lacked the art of perspective, but it was refined and it was delicate. It did not portray gross carnal acts or crude painted idols. It was an art of flowers and fish and birds and butterflies and blossoms.
I was brought up in much bodily ignorance, and I dreaded the moment of consummation. I dreaded failure and rejection. Princesses who failed to conceive were often condemned to a hard and lonely life. As my fifteenth birthday approached, my mother and my aunt had tried to tell me the rituals of the marriage bed, and our slave Pongnyŏ and my wet nurse Aji had whispered and giggled and sniggered about these secret female matters to me. My mother told me my duty, and told me that it would be fulfilled if I were to submit silently to the act, and to continue to respect my husband. My mother respected my father. I had been witness to this. I knew my duty. It was my duty to conceive and to bear an heir. My small, soft, nubile body within its cocoon of silk and brocade was a sacred vessel, and it must be filled with the royal sperm and bring forth a son. The body of my husband in those early days was as shiny and smooth and yellow as a grub. What a dreadful metamorphosis awaited us both!
I think Prince Sado feared the event as much as I. Already he lived in fear of his father – not the violent terror of his later adult years, but an anxious, fretting, nagging fear of failure. His father’s admonitory spirit accompanied us to the marriage bed. But we performed our duty to the satisfaction of all, and I duly conceived and bore my first son, to the rejoicing of the court and, I am told, the common people – though who can tell what the common people think or feel? They may have nourished hatred rather than joy. I never saw the common people living their common life. I glimpsed them through the curtains of my palanquin when I was sixty years of age, as they lined the roads of my royal progress, and I was curious about them. But it was too late. Too late.
The act of sex seems to give pleasure to most men, and they seek it, sometimes to their peril. My father-in-law the king had more than one wife: this was his duty. (His first wife and primary consort, Queen Chŏngsŏng, one of the three Gracious Majesties who loomed over my marriage bed, was childless.) But I think the fact that he took a young consort quite late in life, and a young consort of a lower caste who bore children who were the age of our children, was deeply unsettling to Prince Sado. (Sado was very attached to the childless Queen Chŏngsŏng, his stepmother, who always took his part.) It must have seemed to Prince Sado that his father would live and procreate and dominate and criticize his son for ever. He would never be free of his father. This is what he must have thought. And he was right.
Prince Sado, after our marriage, took secondary wives and concubines, as was customary, and he also lay with nuns and prostitutes, which cannot have been his duty. It is even said that he slept with his younger sister, Madame Chŏng, the favoured daughter of their father. It may have been so. Certainly their relationship was unnaturally intense, and some of the events towards the end of Sado’s life might best be explained by such an involvement. But the rumour of incest may have been a malicious fabrication, like the story of fratricide. Such stories are common in royal circles, in all countries. It was clear that this sister hated me, but she had many other reasons to hate me. All I wish to say in this context is that the act of marital sex gave
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