歸妹
guī mèi

54. The Marrying Maiden

䷵
Above
震 zhèn
The Arousing, Thunder
Below
兌 duì
The Joyous, Lake

Above we have Chen, the el­dest son, and below, Tui, the youngest daugh­ter. The man leads and the girl fol­lows him in glad­ness. The pic­ture is that of the en­trance of the girl into her hus­band’s house. In all, there are four hexa­grams de­pict­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween hus­band and wife. Hsien, IN­FLU­ENCE, de­scribes the at­trac­tion that a young cou­ple have for each other; Heng, du­ra­tion, por­trays the per­ma­nent re­la­tion­ships of mar­riage; Chien, de­vel­op­ment re­flects the pro­tract­ed, cer­e­mo­ni­ous pro­ce­dures at­tend­ing the arrange­ment of a prop­er mar­riage; fi­nal­ly, Kuei Mei, THE MAR­RY­ING MAID­EN, shows a young girl under the guid­ance of an older man who mar­ries her.

The Judgement

The marrying maiden.
Undertakings bring misfortune.
Nothing that would further.

A girl who is taken into the fam­i­ly, but not as the chief wife, must be­have with spe­cial cau­tion and re­serve. She must not take it upon her­self to sup­plant the mis­tress of the house, for that would mean dis­or­der and lead to un­ten­able re­la­tion­ships.

The same is true of all vol­un­tary re­la­tion­ships be­tween human be­ings. While legal­ly reg­u­lat­ed re­la­tion­ships evince a fixed con­nec­tion be­tween du­ties and rights, re­la­tion­ships based on per­son­al in­cli­na­tion de­pend in the long run en­tire­ly on tact­ful re­serve.

Af­fec­tion as the es­sen­tial prin­ci­ple of re­lat­ed­ness is of the great­est im­por­tance in all re­la­tion­ships in the world. For the union of heav­en and earth is the ori­gin of the whole of na­ture. Among human be­ings like­wise, spon­ta­neous af­fec­tion is the all-in­clu­sive prin­ci­ple of union.

The Image

Thunder over the lake:
The image of the marrying maiden.
Thus the superior man
Understands the transitory
In the light of the eternity of the end.

Thun­der stirs the water of the lake, which fol­lows it in shim­mer­ing waves. This sym­bol­izes the girl who fol­lows the man of her choice. But every re­la­tion­ship be­tween in­di­vid­u­als bears with­in it the dan­ger that wrong turns may be taken, lead­ing to end­less mis­un­der­stand­ings and dis­agree­ments. There­fore it is nec­es­sary con­stant­ly to re­main mind­ful of the end. If we per­mit our­selves to drift along, we come to­geth­er and are part­ed again as the day may de­ter­mine. If on the other hand a man fixes his mind on an end that en­dures, he will suc­ceed in avoid­ing the reefs that con­front the clos­er re­la­tion­ships of peo­ple.

The Lines

Nine at the beginning means:
The marrying maiden as a concubine.
A lame man who is able to tread.
Undertakings bring good fortune.

The princes of an­cient China main­tained a fixed order of rank among the court ladies, who were sub­or­di­nat­ed to the queen as are younger sis­ters to the el­dest. Fre­quent­ly they came from the fam­i­ly of the queen, who her­self led them to her hus­band. The mean­ing is that a girl en­ter­ing a fam­i­ly with the con­sent of the wife will not rank out­ward­ly as the equal of the lat­ter but will with­draw mod­est­ly into the back­ground. How­ev­er, if she un­der­stands how to fit her­self into the pat­tern of things, her po­si­tion will be en­tire­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry, and she will feel shel­tered in the love of the hus­band to whom she bears chil­dren. The same mean­ing is brought out in the re­la­tion­ships be­tween of­fi­cials. A man may enjoy the per­son­al friend­ship of a prince and be taken into his con­fi­dence. Out­ward­ly this man must keep tact­ful­ly in the back­ground be­hind the of­fi­cial min­is­ters of state, but, al­though he is ham­pered by this sta­tus, as if he were lame, he can nev­er­the­less ac­com­plish some­thing through the kind­li­ness of his na­ture.

under fa­vor­able cir­cum­stances this rep­re­sents the so­lu­tion of a prob­lem for which Eu­ro­pean cul­ture has failed to find an an­swer. Need­less to say, the ideal set for woman in China is achieved no of­ten­er than is the Eu­ro­pean ideal.

Nine in the second place means:
A one-eyed man who is able to see.
The perseverance of a solitary man furthers.

Here the sit­u­a­tion is that of a girl mar­ried to a man who has dis­ap­point­ed her. Man and wife ought to work to­geth­er like a pair of eyes. Here the girl is left be­hind in lone­li­ness; the man of her choice ei­ther has be­come un­faith­ful or has died. But she does not lose the inner light of loy­al­ty. Though the other eye is gone, she main­tains her loy­al­ty even in lone­li­ness.

Six in the third place means:
The marrying maiden as a slave.
She marries as a concubine.

A girl who is in a lowly po­si­tion and finds no hus­band may, in some cir­cum­stances, still win shel­ter as a con­cu­bine. This pic­tures the sit­u­a­tion of a per­son who longs too much for joys that can­not be ob­tained in the usual way. He en­ters upon a sit­u­a­tion not al­to­geth­er com­pat­i­ble with self-es­teem. Nei­ther judg­ment nor warn­ing is added to this line; it mere­ly lays bare the ac­tu­al sit­u­a­tion, so that every­one may draw a les­son from it.

Nine in the fourth place means:
The marrying maiden draws out the allotted time.
A late marriage comes in due course.

The girl is vir­tu­ous. She does not wish to throw her­self away, and al­lows the cus­tom­ary time for mar­riage to slip by. How­ev­er, there is no harm in this; she is re­ward­ed for her pu­ri­ty and, even though be­lat­ed­ly, finds the hus­band in­tend­ed for her.

Six in the fifth place means:
The sovereign I gave his daughter in marriage.
The embroidered garments of the princess
Were not as gorgeous

The sov­er­eign I is T’ang the Com­pleter. This ruler de­creed that the im­pe­r­i­al princess­es should be sub­or­di­nat­ed to their hus­bands in the same man­ner as other women (cf. hexa­gram 11, six in the fifth place). The em­per­or does not wait for a suit­or to woo his daugh­ter but gives her in mar­riage when he sees fit. There­fore it is in ac­cord with cus­tom for the girl’s fam­i­ly to take the ini­tia­tive here. We see here a girl of aris­to­crat­ic birth who mar­ries a man of mod­est cir­cum­stances and un­der­stands how to adapt her­self with grace to the new sit­u­a­tion. She is free of all van­i­ty of outer adorn­ment, and for­get­ting her rank in her mar­riage, takes a place below that of her hus­band, just as the moon, be­fore it is quite full, does not di­rect­ly face the sun.

Six at the top means:
The woman holds the basket, but there are no
fruits in it.
The man stabs the sheep, but no blood flows.
Nothing that acts to further.

At the sac­ri­fice to the an­ces­tors, the woman had to present har­vest of­fer­ings in a bas­ket, while the man slaugh­tered the sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mal with his own hand. Here the rit­u­al is only su­per­fi­cial­ly ful­filled; the woman takes an empty bas­ket and the man stabs a sheep slaugh­tered be­fore­hand—sole­ly to pre­serve the forms. This im­pi­ous, ir­rev­er­ent at­ti­tude bodes no good for a mar­riage.

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