Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/468

 will naturally have charge of the money. This is a hard and fast rule that is never broken. If there be no such nephew, she may adopt some other boy, if she so desires, or she can hold the property in her own name. If her husband has a childless brother, she must divide the property with him, but not with any more distant relative.

It is a striking fact that among the common people a wife has greater power over her dead husband's property than her more aristocratic sister. If she adopts a son, she still may control the estate if she desires. The Koreans have a queer saying to the effect that to live well in this world one should be the wife of a middle-class man, and when a woman dies she should wish to be reincarnated in the shape of a gentleman or high-class man. This is because in the middle class the woman is more nearly on a level with her husband, she knows more about his business and has more to say in the management of the family affairs than the high-class woman; also she has a much firmer hold upon her husband's estate in case he dies. She is not so strictly bound to adopt a son to whom she will have to hand over the property, nor does she have to give so much to her deceased husband's brothers.

As we descend in the social scale, all restrictive laws and all inequalities between the sexes are toned down, so that when we reach the lowest classes we find that the relations are much the same as in our own land. The Koreans say that among the very lowest classes are to be found the most unfortunate and the most fortunate women ; but this would not be our estimate, for the Koreans mean by this that the mudang, or sorceress, and the courtesan and the dancing-girl, being unmarried, are the most independent women in the land, and are cared for, fed and dressed the best of any in Korea. Of course this is a terribly false judgment, for it looks merely to material comfort and forgets the awful price at which it is bought. On the other hand, the respectable woman of the lowest orders is the most pitiable, for she is everybody's drudge. She has no rights that anyone