CHARACTERS AFRAID OF WIVES IN VIETNAMESE FOLK JOKES

Abstract

In Vietnamese folk jokes, there is a group of stories that revolve around husbands being afraid of their wives. These husbands can be ordinary people or individuals holding village leadership positions or official titles. This is considered peculiar, as the Vietnamese family structure is traditionally influenced by Confucianism, where there is a belief in male dominance and the husband being the lord of the wife. Through an examination of these narratives set within the context of Vietnamese society from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, this article argues that these stories or phenomena have historical, social, and cultural foundations rooted in the lives of the Vietnamese people.