Ho Ran Sol Hon is a well-known poetess who was active in the period of the feudal Joson dynasty, the last feudal state of Korea.
She lived between 1563 and 1589.
She was born as a daughter of Ho Yop, a famous scholar at that time, and learned writing from a talented poet Ri Tal.
Researcher Cha Kwang Hyok at the History Institute under the Academy of Social Sciences says:
"According to some documents including the collection of works titled 'Works of Ran Sol Hon', Ho Ran Sol Hon was good at writing poems and painting from her childhood. She wrote a lot of poems but burned them before her death. Now only a few of them are left.
On the basis of her life experiences restricted by the feudal idea of male supremacy, Ho Ran Sol Hon wrote many poems sympathizing with the miserable lot of the contemporary women who were subjected to double and treble maltreatment and contempt."
Typical of them are the poems "The Girl of a Poor Family" and "Grieving for the Dead Children".
The poem "The Girl of a Poor Family" sings with deep sympathy of the miserable life of a girl who has to weave cloth and make dresses ceaselessly for the rich, blowing warm breath on her fingers at cold night without being married as she was "born into a poor family" though she is pretty and extremely good at needlework and hand-weaving.
The poems of Ho Ran Sol Hon showed the injustice of the then society to some extent on the basis of her life experiences, but failed to criticize it strongly and took on a sad note in general. But she became one of the typical poetesses who were active in the 16th century for her excellent poems reflecting the sufferings and experiences of the women at that time, making a contribution to the development of the women's literature of poetry.
The "Works of Ran Sol Hon", a collection of her remaining poems, serves as an important material showing the development of the women's literature of poetry in Korea at that time.
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