The thing I love about Ja Hyun disguising herself is that it’s not about one disguise only. And also that she doesn’t disguise herself for some dramatic and serious reason, like a birth secret, a conspiration or because of her forbidden artistic passion. Ja Hyun disguise herself as a maid, as a young nobleman, as a male servant, because it suits her needs at the moment. Wether it is to go observe horse at a game, to go to a painting lesson with a young gentleman, or else, she doesn’t create a male persona always dressing or looking the same way, bearing a false name or a false identity, instead she just borrows the persona she presently needs to achieve her goals. Goals that are very innocent and entirely focused on herself and her desires. And that feels incredibly wholesome and fresh.
Ja Hyun lives in a very stuffy and strict time period for women. To be honest, no matter the social rank she would have been born to, she would have felt oppressed by the social conventions of her time. Indeed, she was lucky to be born a noblewoman, for the life of a servant or a peasant is quite harsh and difficult. But ultimately, Ja Hyun still faces the cold steel of the bars surrounding her gender. As she said it in episode 4, her parents didn’t like her painting and so she took the habit of hiding herself to experience her passion, as if she was committing a crime. People kept telling her to not paint, not read, not go outside… all that is incredibly awful but also ver common to women in the past, who were in danger of doing themselves ‘bad’ with improper literature, of being tainted by ‘vulgarity’ if they went outside on their own, of becoming too engrossed in art because they were too ‘sensible’ and ‘weak at heart’.
So Ja Hyun, despite growing into a loving family, also felt terribly repressed and I’m guessing, fucking bored by her life. I mean, if you can’t go outside, can’t draw, can’t even fucking read ??? What’s the point of living then ? While other young women found ways to somehow accept these bars of steel, because they had no choice and perhaps a less contradictory spirit than Ja Hyun, through bridal training, socialisation between ladies, perhaps even through a set of ‘appropriate’ books if they were lucky, and learnt to dull themselves into what was expected of them. Which, in short, was baby makers.
Ja Hyun, who has a certain amount of disregard for other people’s opinions and expectations, as well as a strong desire to be happy and care about herself first and furthermore despite how scandalous that might be for that time period ( and also for our current time period, judging from some comments I saw here and there about Ja Hyun and her ‘selfishness’ amongst other much less pleasant comments ), strives towards her own well-being and the meaning of her existence in this life. Certainly, she thinks, she did not come to be in this world for the benefit of any husband or in-laws. What Ja Hyun ultimately strives towards is the knowledge of her own self, of her desires, of her possibilities in this world. What does she want ? What would make her happy ? Which future could she have that doesn’t involve a husband ?
And that’s where she uses disguises to escape from one rank and gender, that places certains rules and limits on her movement, and escape into another, that allows her to move around freely without consequences. She sheds those disguises easily because those disguises are just a tool of liberation, no matter how shortly lived. They are in no way a rejection of her gender and femininity, or a restriction imposed to her by some unfortunate situation. Rather, what she wants to do is simply explore life, her environment, and see how people live in it, what options she has with her own future, and follow her passion to the utmost, exploring both life and art as she wishes, and being true to her passion and aspirations.
And that’s honestly the freshest narrative I’ve seen applicated to the cross-dressing trope in sageuks ( and possibly kdramas in general ).
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