LIFE AND WORKS OF RIZAL

MODULE 6
RIZAL’S WOMEN

Kuizon
LESSON 2: Required Reading
READ
In 2015 Leila Grace Pandy wrote a paper entiled “Decentering Jose Rizal and Maria Clara:
Interventions in Filipina Feminity and Nationalist Fiction by Transpacific Filipina Writers” at the
University of Texas. The first section of her paper presented unique views on why the image of Maria
Clara has affected how Filipino men have viewed and stereotyped Filipina women since then.

It also explores how this has affected how Filipina women have viewed themselves.

The PDF file of her paper is attached to this lesson. Please read ONLY pages 1-21 which
covers the Introduction, the Methodology, and Chapter 1.

ACTIVITY: Essay
Write an essay (minimum 400 words) on how the idealization of Maria Clara has affected you
(either as a man or as a woman). Is this a positive influence or a negative one? Explain.

Maria Clara is a mestiza and the childhood sweetheart of the novel’s protagonist, Crisostomo Ibarra.
Rizal created her as the ideal image of “the purity and innocence of a sheltered native (Filipino)
woman during the Spanish occupation.” ,” Maria Clara was placed “on the pedestal of male honor.”

Maria Clara symbolizes different faces of traits, capabilities and representation. Some of may think
that she is the modern face of beauty that shows the result of the mixed culture of the filipinos and
Spaniards it could be the face of the future that this two opposition can join together in harmony. The
downside of this representation is that the virginity of our nation is being corrupted by the
colonization of the Spaniards they introduces and slaved our nation in order to fulfill what they
wanted. . The Spanish succeeded in destroying the power of the babayans and replacing her with
María Clara, who was domestic, obedient, meek, docile, religious, beautiful, and charitable, who lived
a saintly life accepting and enduring suffering. This idealization of the woman as martyr–an
idealization that was a product of the colonial project–cuts across class lines.

Although this idea of RIzal pointed that Maria Clara symbolize in Noli Me Tángere Maria Clara
symbolizes the purity and innocence of a sheltered native woman during the time of Spanish
occupation. It doesn't change the fact that we have been colonized by the foreign country and they
succeeded in doing and materializing their plan on our nation. As time goes by the represention of
Maria Clara changes and the modern generation already forgotten the true meaning of maria clara.