Self-Sacrificing Wife,Gruff Husband: Hee Gyung Noh's View of Terminal Illness in a Korean Marriage

Abstract

The authors' translation of a Korean novel is used to explore marital dynamics when the woman is terminally ill. In Korean marriages, the wife is typically self-sacrificing, the husband gruff, and the couple relationship distant and based on a strict division of labor. The novel traces the relationship from the woman's first concerns about her health. The husband struggles to deal with the diagnosis—his denial, alcohol use, rage, shame, and realization of how unhelpful, unappreciative, and uncaring he has been. The story moves to the couple's struggle to bridge the relationship chasm between them and say what is in their hearts. They remain in role, him unable to give her things she wants and she dissatisfied and self-sacrificing. Finally, he is able to express his appreciation and apologies by doing chores and saying things that are out of role for a Korean man. They communicate their love in understated but deeply caring ways.

Keywords

marriage terminal illness dying Korea cancer gender

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Kendall

1996. Getting married in Korea: Of gender, morality, and modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kim

B. L. C.

1996. Korean families. In Ethnicity and family therapy, 2d ed., edited by McGoldrick

Giordano

, and Pearce

J. K.

, 281–94. New York: Guilford.

Kim

K.-A.

1995. Women's fate is a gourd's fate: Labour and sexuality of Korean married women. Brighton, UK: University of Sussex, Institute of Development Studies.

Lee

K.-k.

1997. Korean family and kinship. Seoul, Korea: Jipmoondang Publishing.

Nadeau

J. W.

1998. Families making sense of death. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Neimeyer

R. A.

, and Stewart

A. E.

. 1996. Trauma, healing, and the narrative emplotment of loss. Families in Society 77:360–75.

Noh

H. G.

1997. The most beautiful farewell in the world (in Korean). Seoul, Korea: Han-min-sa Publishing.

Rosenblatt

P. C.

2000. Parent grief: Narratives of loss and relationship. Philadelphia: Brunner/Mazel.

Rosenblatt

P. C.

2002. Interviewing at the border of fact and fiction. In The handbook of interview research, edited by Gubrium

J. F.

and Holstein

J. A.

, 893–909. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

10.

Yang

, and Rosenblatt

P. C.

. 2001. Shame in Korean families. Journal of Comparative Family Studies 32:361–75.