The idealized image of a docile Filipina wearing a venerated baro’t saya has been embedded in all facets of Philippine culture, heritage, and history. From books to films, pictures and drawings mostly depict a naive, demure, and subservient Filipina against a backdrop of a rural setting. The air of sophistication and aplomb is somewhat absent.
For centuries, this recurring depiction became a dictum in every Filipino mindset. Filipinas continue to be pockmarked as downcast behind the concept of Filipino patriarchy. In many Filipino households, for instance, it is morally acceptable that women are deprived of erudition and self-sufficiency. When these women get married, dependency on the husband becomes the norm.
The question leans on whether women ought to debunk this belief or not, knowing that it has adversely persisted in the consciousness of Philippine society. The Filipina persona has since metamorphosed, yet patriarchal society stays reluctant to subsume this evolution. Even if the ceiling has been shattered by some, disparity remains clasped to the antiquated tale.
It is worth revisiting the chronicles that our ancestors have bequeathed us. What better way than to deconstruct Dr. Jose Rizal’s own feminist views through his writings. Rizal’s precepts have yet to be thoroughly examined in a broader lens in order to grasp a better understanding of how women were perceived during his time.
Rizal’s letter in 1889, “Ang Liham sa mga Kadalagahan sa Malolos, Bulakan”, provided his personal insights on Filipino women. Upon the request of Marcelo H. Del Pilar, Rizal penned a letter in Tagalog addressed to the twenty young women of Malolos who petitioned the Spanish authorities for night school in order to learn Spanish. After being rejected by the friars, these women defied the decision and persisted until they got the approval.
This is the opening statement of Rizal’s letter translated in English:
“When I wrote Noli Me Tangere, I asked myself whether bravery was a common thing in the young women of our people. I brought back to my recollection and reviewed those I had known since my infancy, but there were only few who seem to come up to my ideal. There was, it is true, an abundance of girls with agreeable manners, beautiful ways, and modest demeanor, but there was in all an admixture of servitude and deference to the words or whims … due to excessive kindness, modesty, or perhaps ignorance. They seemed faced plants sown and reared in darkness, having flowers without perfume and fruits without sap…”
Rizal’s emphatic and scathing illustration may have fully captured the apathetic stance of women in his time. In lieu of reassuring the Malolos women in sanguine words, Rizal’s sardonic pronouncements contained a pernicious punch that reverberated from his generation to the next.
Rizal was quick in acknowledging his misconception by expressing a tinge of hope in his letter: “Now that you have responded to our first appeal in the interest of the welfare of the people; now that you have set an
example to those who, like you, long to have their eyes opened and be delivered from servitude, new hopes are awakened in us and we now even dare to face adversity, because we have you for our allies and are confident of victory”…
Rizal continued walloping these women’s consciousness by exposing their weaknesses …“No longer does the Filipina stand with her head bowed nor does she spend her time on her knees, because she is quickened by hope in the future; no longer will the mother contribute to keeping her daughter in darkness and bring her up in contempt and moral annihilation. And no longer will the science of all sciences consist in blind submission to any unjust order, or in extreme complacency, nor will a courteous smile be deemed the only weapon against insult or humble tears the ineffable panacea for all tribulations”…
By examining Rizal’s famous novels, “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo”, every female character validated Rizal’s description in his Malolos letter. Maria Clara has been alluded to as “true Filipina”: prudent, modest, kind, and faithful, yet weak, fragile, and gullible. Then there was Doña Victorina: callous, conniving, and ignorant. Sisa lacked the mental, physical, and emotional fortitude. Other female characters rendered the same set of dismissive representations.
Rizal highlighted in his letter that it is not only Filipinas who are ignorant but the whole of Asia:
…”The cause of the backwardness of Asia lies in the fact that there the women are ignorant, are slaves; while Europe and America are powerful because there the women are free and well-educated and endowed with lucid intellect and a strong will”…
The footprints of the past are not easy to blot out in the present. When a Filipina rightfully asserts her basic rights, she is labelled as aggressive. When she speaks up publicly about legal matters, she is being branded as belligerent. When she advocates for legitimate issues, she is projected as contemptuous. One is perceived as ‘unFilipina’ because of her aberration from the ingrained image.
Notwithstanding the ramifications, Rizal’s narrative still resonates explicitly in Philippine political halls these days. Flagrant proliferation of extreme lawlessness, malicious intent, cupidity, immorality, vituperation, and ineptitude wantonly thrive. Aside from moral annihilation that Rizal cautioned, no ounce of decency, proper decorum, intellectual acuity, and statesmanship prevail. Utter ignorance, according to Rizal’s vision, remains perennial as the grass.
Amid the current political disorder wrought by fiendish and cunning personalities, Rizal’s brand of feminism continue to mortify Filipinos. Former Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno needed to invoke Rizal as a moral framework for clarity, integrity, and courage while clamouring for justice and countering oppression.
As Rizal would have it, he delineated these reprobate Filipina politicians in his writings in the most blistering manner: …“reared in darkness, having flowers without perfume and fruits without sap”. In the face of a palpable advancement of the image of a Filipina, these women politicos still perpetuate Rizal’s centuries-old characterizations. ####