Lachica, Justine Therese

Zamora, Patricia Nicole R.

Feminist Literary Criticism Wedding Dance

Typically, in stories, women appear as the weak characters who are needed to be saved.
They seldom appear as the protagonist or main character of the story. Women wouldnt exist
independently in stories. Its as if they always need to have a partner to be able to portray an
interesting role. Based on the story Wedding Dance, Awiyao encourages Lumnay to attend his
wedding dance and find a new man to marry her. This implicates that men always look at women
as mere wives whose role is to reproduce and do household chores.

Women are not credited with their own existence and their own characteristics. This is
evidently shown in the story when Lumnay, despite of her skills in planting beans, cleaning jars
and cleaning a house better than most wives in the whole village, Awiyao still decided to leave
her and replace her for the sake of having a child.

Women are often objectified, they are only used as a means for reproduction and to
satisfy mens pleasure. The womens feelings are not given importance because in the story, even
though Lumnay loves Awiyao with all her heart and she does everything to be a good wife of
Awiyao, in their society, this is not enough because she is unable to bear a child.

The women in the story are not given equal status with the men because they are
considered as secondary members of the society. Their purpose in the tribe is to perform
livelihood and productive work. The womens capabilities in other aspects such as their
knowledge and leadership skills are ignored as only men are given the opportunity to lead in
their tribe. In their tribe, men with wives are considered superior or highly looked upon. Women
in the story are demeaned because they only follow the orders of their husbands. They cannot
complain or express themselves if something is against their will.

The concerns of the women is not taken into consideration in the story. This is evident in
the story where Lumnay offered to do everything for Awiyao and she even begged for him to
stay. Instead of listening, Awiyao went with proceeding with the wedding and insisted that he is
incomplete without a child.