宋朝年間，商人甲在出販途中身亡，其妻在毫不知情的情況下再嫁謀害甲之真凶乙。數年之後，兩人已育有二子。乙仗夫妻感情日深，向妻子坦白了自己殺害甲的事實。其妻將乙告官，乙終伏法。以上述梗概為基礎的記載至少見於五位宋人的六種著述。幾位作者對事件發生的年代、地點，及甲乙關係的說法各異。但這些版本最大的不同在於他們對甲妻再嫁和乙坦白真相後其妻反應的描述。本文根據這些材料追述故事的由來，著重討論不同作者對女性道德的定義，同時展示文本及口述傳播如何塑造了故事中宋代婦女的形象及記憶。研究這一案例的另一初衷是說明不同文體間的互通以及宋人如何處理作者意圖和記錄可信材料之間的關係。

Sometime in the Song dynasty, a merchant died while traveling on the road. Without realizing that her husband had been murdered, the merchant’s wife later remarried his killer. Several years passed, during which the couple had two sons. The killer, thinking that his wife would disregard his crime, confessed to her. The woman immediately notified the authorities, who had the man arrested and executed. The above story appeared in six accounts by five Song authors. In addition to large discrepancies in the time and place of the incident and the relationship between the two men, these records diverged in their portrayal of the heroine’s remarriage and her reactions upon learning of her marriage to her first husband’s murderer. This paper traces the evolution of the story based on these Song texts, focusing its discussion on the changing notions of female morality and representation of spousal relationships. Another goal of the study is to show how both textual and oral transmission shaped the woman’s image and memory over the course of a hundred and fifty years. Above all, this examination aims to illustrate the fluidity of various literary genres and offer a case study of the balance Song biji writers attempted to achieve between their authorial intentions and goal of recording reliable material.