Filipino Women Writers - Image and Influence

Image and Influence

Among the principal influences to the Filipina image of herself and to her writings include four women in Philippine history, namely: Gabriela Silang, Leonor Rivera, Imelda Marcos and Corazon Aquino. Often mentioned in Philippine literature, these four represents the struggle, perception and character of how it is to be a woman in Philippine society. Gabriela Silang was a katipunera or a revolutionary – a representation of female bravery – who fought against the Spanish colonialism in the 18th century. Silang was a contrast to the chaste and religiously devout image of the Filipino lady as portrayed by Jose Rizal through his Spanish-language novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Within the pages of these novels of the 19th century, Rizal depicted Leonor Rivera - a girlfriend of his - through the fictional character of Maria Clara as the epitome of virtue, the ideal Filipina. Then there was the arrival of Imelda Marcos – the “beauty queen… dictator’s wife… the power-seeking kind of a woman…” – and then there was the advent and the rise of Corazon C. Aquino, the first woman president in Asia and the Philippines – the elected 1986 replacement of a male despot, Ferdinand Marcos. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, after two male presidents (Fidel V. Ramos and Joseph Estrada, respectively), followed the footsteps of Corazon Aquino into becoming a leader and political figure of an Asian nation.

In later years of modern-day Philippine literature, from the 1960s to the 1980s, feminism became the focus of Philippine women writers – first in poetry and then prose – in order to break away from what is termed as the “Great Grand Silence of the Centuries”. The creation of an image unique to themselves – through their own individual efforts – became the norm. There were criticisms against the Maria Clara image portrayed by the Philippine paladin, José Rizal, as well as critiques and female disapproval of how Filipino men writers wrote about women. Contemporary feminist female writers were also inclined towards breaking away from the traditional, idealized and typecast image of Filipina women of the past, being matriarchal mystics, and figures that perform sacrifices, undergo suffrage and works of martyrdom which were expected from their pious upbringing. Women writers also passed judgment against the typical portrayal of women as sex symbols. Among the first lady writers to break away from the old style and genre exemplified in the works of past female writers such as Paz Latorena's traditional "teachings" about the ideal Filipina was the feminist poet, Marjorie Evasco. Other women writers like Kerima Polotan Tuvera, Rosario Cruz Lucero, Ligaya Victorio-Reyes and Jessica Zafra even stepped forward to boldly make it a “fashion” to discuss aspects of womanhood that were previously regarded as taboo in Philippine society, such as subjects about female anatomy, erotica, divorce or separation from former husbands, abortion, premarital affairs, and childless marriages. An example is the 1992 publication of Forbidden Fruit, a bilingual volume combining Filipino and English language works of women.