A FEMINIST APPROACH IN LITERARY ANALYSIS

THE VIRGINKERIMA POLOTAN-TUVERA

LanguageRecognize the role of language in making what is social and constructed seem transparent and ‘natural’

Symbols (representations of women)Recognize emblems of the construction of gender identity

PatriarchyStudy whether men and women are ‘essentially’ different because of biology. Or are socially constructed as different

Feminist Criticism

KERIMA POLOTAN-TUVERA1925-2011

•Awardee: Philippine Free Press for Literature, Palanca Awards

•Editor of Arellano Literary Review, FOCUS Magazine, Evening Post,

•Writer of Imelda Romualdez Marcos: A Biography of the First Lady of the Philippines (1969)

[1a] He went to where Miss Mijares sat, a tall, big man, walking with an economy of movement, graceful and light, a man who knew his body and used it well. He sat in the low chair worn decrepit by countless other interviewers and laid all ten fingerprints carefully on the edge of her desk.

Let us study how the author used language in building the characters of Miss Mijares and the man

[4] Where she sat alone at one of the cafeteria tables, Miss Mijares did not look 34. She was slight, almost bony, but she had learned early how to dress herself to achieve an illusion of hips and bosom. She liked poufs and shirrings and little girlish pastel colors. On her bodice, astride or lengthwise, there sat an inevitable row of thick camouflaging ruffles that made her look almost as though she had a bosom, if she bent her shoulders slightly and inconspicuously drew her neckline open to puff some air into her bodice.

[5] Her brow was smooth and clear and she was always pushing off it the hair she kept in tight curls at night. She had thin cheeks, small and angular, falling down to what would have been a nondescript, receding chin, but Nature’s hand had erred and given her a jaw instead. When displeased, she had a lippy, almost sensual pout, surprising on such a small face.

[6] So while not exactly an ugly woman, she was no beauty. She teetered precariously on the border line to which belonged countless others who you found, if they were not working at some job, in the kitchen of some married sister’s house shushing a brood of devilish little nephews.

[13a] In his hands, he held her paperweight, an old gift from long ago, a heavy wooden block on which stood, as though poised for flight, an undistinguished, badly done bird. It had come apart recently. The screws beneath the block loosened so that lately it had stood upon her desk with one wing tilted unevenly, a miniature eagle or swallow?

[14] He had turned it and with a penknife tightened the screws and dusted it. In this man’s hands, cupped like that, it looked suddenly like a dove.

[15] She took it away from him and put it down on her table. Then she picked up his paper and read it.

[16] He was a high school graduate. He was also a carpenter.

[3] When she talked with the jobless across her desk, asking them the damning questions that completed their humiliation, watching pale tongues run over dry lips, dirt crusted handkerchiefs flutter in trembling hands, she was filled with an impatience she could not understand. Sign here, she had said thousands of times, pushing the familiar form across, her finger held to a line, feeling the impatience grow at sight of the man or woman tracing a wavering “X” or laying the impress of a thumb. Invariably, Miss Mijares would turn away to tough the delicate edge of the handkerchief she wore on her breast.

Let us study paragraph 3. Notice how Miss Mijares’s character is portrayed in terms of her relations to interviewees.

[18] “I heard about this place,” he said, ‘from a friend you got a job at the pier.” Seated, he towered over her, “I’m not starving yet,” he said with a quick smile. “I still got some money from that last job, but my team broke up after that and you got too many jobs if you’re working alone. You know carpentering,” he continued, “you can’t finish a job quickly enough if you got to do the planing and sawing and nailing all by your lone self. You got to be on a team.”

Now, let us see how the man [carpenter] behaves in terms of his speech and demeanor in Miss Mijares’s point of view.

[19] Perhaps he was not meaning to be impolite? But for a jobseeker, Miss Mijares thought, he talked too much and without call. He was bursting all over with an obtruding insolence that at once disarmed and annoyed her.

[27] “Ato says I have you to thank,” he said, stopping Miss Mijares along a pathway in the compound.

[28] It was noon, that unhappy hour of the day when she was oldest, tiredest, when it seemed the sun put forth cruel fingers to search out the signs of age on her thin, pinched face. The crow’s feet showed unmistakably beneath her eyes and she smiled widely to cover them up and acquainting a little, said, “Only a half peso – Ato would have given it to you eventually.”

Now, let us see the exchange between Miss Mijares and the man. This was after Ato, the foreman, agreed to give the new worker half a peso, through Miss Mijares’s negotiation.

[29] “Yes, but you spoke for me,” he said, his big body heaving before her. “Thank you, though I don’t need it as badly as the rest, for to look at me, you would knew I have no wife --- yet.”

[30] She looked at him sharply, feeling the malice in his voice. “I’d do it for any one,” she said and turned away, angry and also ashamed, as though he had found out suddenly that the ruffles on her dress rested on a flat chest.

Miss Mijares

• slight• almost bony• smooth and clear brow• thin cheeks• small and angular• receding chin• thin, pinched face• crow’s feet• lippy, almost sensual pout• illusion of hips and bosom• poufs, shirring, ruffles• college graduate, HR officer

Man (carpen

ter)

• tall• big• graceful • light• big, strong wrists• old, pressed clothes• heaving body• unmarried, but has a son• high school graduate• carpenter

The wooden bird paperweightIn English romanticism and poetry, birds

symbolize sacrifice, change of fortune, or purity and innocence.

In The Virgin, the “undistinguished, badly done bird” could convey several meanings between Miss Mijares and the man. For Miss Mijares, it could pertain to her life as an unfulfilled woman, being virgin and unmarried at the age of 34. “It suddenly looked like a dove” conveys the hope, love, promise that Miss Mijares might expect from the man.

For the man, it could mean that he has finally come to take Miss Mijares’s purity and realize her “secret, short-lived thoughts” about love, as shown when he “tightened the screws and dusted it”.

Let us study the symbols which strongly suggest eroticism in the theme of the story.

Jeepney’s detourThe jeepney’s detour on several occasions

as Miss Mijares heads home suggests a diversion of route. According to an online dream interpreter, to see a detour in one’s dream suggests that one has encountered an obstacle in some aspect of his/her life. He/She may not want to confront something directly, and thus is trying to find a way around it.

Miss Mijares could not admit openly (or maybe even to herself) that her physical need in “secret, short-lived thoughts” on love is burning her within, and so she masks it with an aloof, superior attitude.

The dream of being lostTo dream that you are lost suggests that you

have lost your direction in life or that you have lost sight of your goals. You may be feeling worried and insecure about the path you are taking in life. (http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/l3.html)

In this symbol, Miss Mijares is shown as someone who, because of other priorities in life, have lost sight of her dream of becoming a mother and a wife.

The rainstormRain is a symbol that holds varied meanings.

Emotionally, rain symbolizes tears, sadness, frustration. On the other hand, it could also mean cleansing, washing away of sadness and rebirth, since rain nourishes humans, crops and animals. It's a symbol of taking away the dark and the old to make way for new things. This is also seen as a symbol of change in some circumstances.

When, during a rainy afternoon that both of them were stranded in an unfamiliar, dark street, Miss Mijares, driven by her feelings and emotion, finally gave in to the man’s invitation.

The virginal state of Miss MijaresIn the Filipino cultural context, virginity

(or chastity) for unmarried woman is virtuous. It is an acceptable norm. However, the author portrays Miss Mijares as a “victim” and not as someone who is happy in such a virtuous state. This is shown as she reflects on her virginal state “with a mixture of shame and bitterness and guilt”.

Now, let us see how the author portrayed the characters in contrasting nature. We will also point out whether socialisation or the accptable versions of men and women roles are present.

Women as dutiful daughtersIn almost all cultures, both sons and

daughters are expected to be dutiful to their parents. However, women are expected to be “extra” dutiful in terms of personal sacrifice, often bearing it in silence and solitude.

Miss Mijares sacrificed her youth in order to put her niece into college and take care of an ailing, dying mother. In the end, she was left with no mother and no lover.

[last] In her secret heart, Miss Mijares’ young dreams fluttered faintly to life, seeming monstrous in the rain, near this man --- seeming monstrous but sweet overwhelming. I must get away, she thought wildly, but he had moved and brushed against her, and where his touch had fallen, her flesh leaped, and she recalled how his hands had looked that first day, lain tenderly on the edge of her desk and about the wooden bird (that had looked like a moving, shining dove) and she turned to him with her ruffles wet and wilted, in the dark she turned to him.

…and she turned to him with her ruffles wet and wilted, in the

dark she turned to him.