The Girls’ Sorrow in “The Seventh Month,” Classic of Poetry

“The Seventh Month,” the first long poem of the Guo Feng section, is a rare beautiful ancient poem depicting countryside scenes. According to the Mao commentary, it is written by the Duke of Zhou two thousand years ago to narrate the difficult process of nation formation. Since the Mao commentary is characterized by its emphasis on history and rites, it is traditional for annotators to highlight the educational and political meaning of the Classic of Poetry. “The Seventh Month” thus becomes the model of ideal politics, in which the relationship between the emperor and his subjects is analogous to a family living in harmony.
However, there are several kinds of interpretations on the sentence in “The Seventh Month”: “Nu xin shang bei, dai ji gong zi tong gui.” Guo Moruo, a contemporary scholar interpreting Chinese classics with Western theories, even takes this sentence as a proof to claim the society in the Classic of Poetry as slavery. This perspective greatly influences the following interpretation methods in modern China, e.g. a sociological one and a culturological one.
This study classifies the interpretations of the sentence mentioned above into three categories: sentimentality, chores and marriage. The objective is to present the dynamic side of the Classic of Poetry by taking a glance at its interpretation history.