Female Representations in

Selected Philippine Literary Texts

Gender equality was already present in the Philippines even before it was

colonized by Spain during the 16th century. In fact, women priestesses held high

positions in the pre-Spanish community wherein they presided over rituals and they were

considered as the bearer of the oral literatures and holder of wisdom back then.

Furthering their privileged position was their knowledge on the art of healing, making

them indispensable members of the community especially during times of health

outbreaks and wars. Aside from being a healer, a priestess was the “arbiter of culture”

and the “first expert on the social sciences and humanities in Philippine society”

(Kintanar, 1992: 2). Philippine women back then enjoyed more or less equal rights and

privileges with Philippine men, especially the priestesses who were known by the name

of catalonan and babaylan.

But upon the arrival of the Spanish troops in the Philippine shores and the

establishment of their government and religion in the country, women’s position in the

society drastically declined. The Spanish colonizers not only brought and implemented

their religion and government policies, but also their patriarchal traditions. In order to

ensure the success of the dissemination of their religion, the Roman Catholic, Spanish

priests tried to abolish the practice of the pagan religion prevalent in the country then,

which consisted mostly of nature worship, calling the practitioners of the said religion as

heretics. The Spanish priests burned the anitos that were used mainly during religious

rituals and hunted down the priestesses in the pretext that these priestesses were

witches. If a priestess is unfortunately hunted down, she is burned or killed. In order to

avoid these unjust executions, some priestesses escaped to the mountains and it is from

these that the Philippine urban legend of aswangs dwelling in the darkness of mountain
ranges is rooted from. Furthermore, the images of aswangs are exaggerated and there

is no one united physical description of the said entity. It ranges from a being with only a

half-body, a being with bat-like wings, or a being that feasts on unborn child. Even

though the descriptions of these aswangs differ from one another, they still all had one

thing in common and that is that aswangs are female entities. The presentation of

woman as a dangerous entity is present not only in the image of aswang but also in

horrifying creatures in other Philippine urban legends like white ladies, manananggal,

mangkukulam etc.

The female representation of aswangs as horrible, scary blood-suckers, organ-

eaters is still widely believed in different parts of the country nowadays as evident in the

short story The Tale of Tonyo the Brave by Maria Aleah Taboclaon. The story is set in

a small town in the southern part of Bukidnon and it tells the adventure of the protagonist

who is a young boy of 12 by the name of Tonyo. He lives in a small house with his

mother, father, two older brothers and their grandfather who is called Apo. Unlike his

father and two brothers, he doesn’t sit well with hunting and therefore usually spends his

free time with his Apo who regales to him supernatural stories and his own experiences

with some entities like dwende, kapre and manananggal. This earned him the reputation

of being a sissy. One time the ease of the family is disturbed by the news of the death of

a male farmer from another town. It is not a usual death because he was murdered and

his body was mangled beyond recognition and his internal organs were pulled out. What

is further baffling is that the coroner said that neither a knife nor a bolo was used in the

crime and that only left the bare hands of the unknown suspect as the main weapon

used in the crime. It is the second murder of such in the span of only two months and

upon hearing the description Apo went to the doctor to inquire about the circumstances

of the murders. Returning from the doctor, Apo’s fear is confirmed – that the killer is a

female entity called manlalayug. A manlalayug transforms into a beautiful woman during
hunting and she uses her unnatural charm to entrap and weaken a man’s will. She then

will proceed to kill her male victim, pull out and eat his organs. Even though a

manlalayug is hunted down, she usually escapes by the use of her special power which

enables her to produce a like image of herself which would then fool the hunters. The

hunter ended up stabbing the image of the manlalayug, using a special metal which is

believed that will kill her, unknowing that the real manlalayug is at his back. If a hunter

succeeds in stabbing the manlalayug, he must run away as fast as possible because

she can still curse him in her last breath. Unfortunately that’s what happened to Apo’s

father, who died because a manlalayug cursed him after he stabbed her to death. But

before dying he imparted the knowledge of the creature to Apo and Apo, in turn, partake

the knowledge to Tonyo’s family. Unfortunately, Tonyo’s father is hesitant in hunting

down the manlalayug himself, thinking of the consequences if he dies during the

process. Eventually Tonyo secretly take it into himself in hunting the manlalayug. During

the appointed night that the manlalayug will prowl again, Tonyo went to hunt her and

when he finally saw her, he is enchanted by her uncommon beauty and grace. He would

have fallen to her snare if the bronze knife that Apo said will kill the manlalayug had not

nicked him on his arm. As if awaken from a dream, Tonyo stabs the woman in front of

him but to his amazement his knife just went through the woman as if she is just an air.

Then he remembers what his grandfather told them, that the manlalayug is actually at

one’s back and it is only her image that one sees in front of him. Remembering that,

Tonyo stabbed backwards and this time his knife stabbed flesh. Turning back, he saw

the beautiful manlalayug with her dress turning red from blood and he run as fast as he

can without turning back, away from the manlalayug, lest she curse him. Upon arrival to

their home, his brothers wake their parents and together with Apo went back to the place

where Tonyo killed the manlalayug but the body is nowhere to be found. The next day,
the neighborhood and the authorities help looked for a woman’s body but none was

found. From then on, Tonyo was known as Tonyo the Brave.

The story of The Tale of Tonyo the Brave bears two extreme portrayals of

women. One is the undermining of women as mere housewives and housekeepers as

portrayed by the character of Tonyo’s mother. She is shown as a housewife who is

innately nervous about dangerous things and she is also portray as a dependent

individual to her husband, as shown in the scene wherein she gets angry with Apo for

even suggesting that her husband should hunt the manlalayug. She thinks of the

consequence that will come if ever her husband will not succeed and die and she will be

left to fend for the family alone. It seems that she is portraying women as soft individuals

who can’t seem to survive without their husbands to provide for them and their family.

The other extreme portrayal of women in the story is the antagonist herself, the

manlalayug. She is shown as a deceitful and dangerous woman who eats unsuspecting

men. She is strong and her possession of powers enforces the mystery of her being and

she is considered a pest in the community that must be killed. Upon closer look, it seems

that the manlalayug could be a metaphor to strong and independent women that due to

these characters they are considered dangerous and unusual, even evil. What is further

disturbing factor in the story is that it portrays men as strong and brave heroes as the

consequence of conquering and defeating women represented by the manlalayug. Once

again, the image of the oppressed ‘other’ is evident in this story.

Moreover, although not a direct female representation, the image of the tiyanak is

still connected to the females for tiyanak is popularly believed to be aborted babies or

babies who died without receiving the sacrament of baptism. In a way, the image of

tiyanak is used as a factor to scare women who wants to consider having an abortion.

Such actions demands a guilty conscience of an individual in the Roman Catholic

context, believing that humans don’t have the right to terminate an embryo because it
has life and God is the one who gives life. Roman Catholics don’t exercise pro-choice

instead it advocates pro-life. Feminists fights for the right to choose and to decide what

to do with their own bodies, this including the right to have an abortion. But to a country

with majority of the population exercises Roman Catholicism, it seems that abortion is

not a choice, not even as a final resort. The individuals who had aborted their babies and

those who treat abortion as their jobs are usually plagued by guilty conscience. Pro-

choice and pro-life is really a contradicting thought especially for Filipinas, wherein the

choice between their life and a child’s right to live is too difficult to decide upon.

Interestingly, the option of abortion is not usually considered by most Filipinas, and it is

usually only their partners who prods them to that direction, saying that they are not

ready for a family and that they must get rid of ‘it’. Unfortunately, in most cases, it is the

women who suffer from their guilty conscience and such circumstance is render in a

poem by Eliza Leigh Brillante entitled Four Thousand Bucks. The poem shows the

persona being miserable after undergoing an abortion. The third stanza contains

contradicting thoughts as seen below:

four thousand bucks

in exchange for the emptiness

and the relief. His callous hands

took away my burden

but only for a while.

Even though the persona was relieved of the burden of unwanted pregnancy, she still

feels a certain emptiness deep inside of her. This relief is only temporary as the poem

implies due to the fact that the persona believes that what she has done is morally

wrong and she knows that her conscience will not leave her rest in peace.
 Aside from the annihilation of the practices of the priestesses and their nature-

worship religion, the coming of the Spanish in the Philippines ensures the assimilation of

the patriarchal traditions in the country’s culture. From being active and productive

members of the society, Filipinas were pushed in the background and the Filipinos and

Spaniards begun to dominate the community. A Filipina’s role was now confined to

household chores and the raising of the children; consequently she has no voice or say

to decisions that will affect the community and the family. Her role is to ensure that the

house is in order, the kids grow up fine and to support her husband in his every

endeavor. In a way she is forever bound to the males in her life, firstly to her father and

brothers and then to her husband and children. The Filipina seems to have lost her

sense of individualism and her identity is constrained to that of the males in her life. This

travail of a Filipina is manifested in Marra Lanot’s poem entitled Tribeswoman. The

persona celebrates her traditional role as female – as a daughter, as a wife and as a

mother. She celebrates the fact that she is the bearer of her father’s dreams and the

molder of her children’s future. Yet she questions the same traditional roles which leave

her “physically and psychologically drained” (Evasco, 1992: 20). Interestingly, there is no

mention of the persona’s work career whatsoever, emphasizing even more the

stereotype of women as mere home people whose lifetime career is contained in her

family’s four-walled house. The repeating lines “could it be possible?” paves way to the

reevaluation of women’s traditional role in society and the line even opens up the

possibilities for change in these roles.

These traditional roles of women are further developed in Susan Lara’s Claudia.

Claudia is the main character in the story and she is a caring daughter, a supportive wife

and a loving mother all rolled in one. She is just an ordinary woman who is blessed with

the ability of giving tender loving care to others that is why she became a nurse. It was

on the hospital where she worked that she first met her husband, Ted, who was one of
her patients. After getting married, Claudia left her career as a nurse in order to better

serve her husband and their daughter. The story gives us the information that she is

tending her old and sick father in their home, given that she used to work as a nurse.

Their relationship is actually interesting since even though Claudia and her father never

really get along that well, she still cares for him tenderly and with much love. Her father

on the other hand tries not to be a source of inconvenience to her, asking for as little

help as possible. Every time her father thinks that he is causing distress to Claudia, he

would look to her apologetically. Being a housewife, Claudia spends her days in their

house tending her sick father. She feels a sense of unimportance ever since her

husband climbs to the top of the company where he works, spending more time with his

colleagues and less time at home, added to the fact that her daughter is in college and

opted to stay in a dormitory. One by one it seems that her love ones are drifting further

and further away from her, while she is stuck in her seemingly unprogressive life. She

even likens herself to an umbrella that is put in a corner but would still be in use during

the rainy season, meanwhile, it seems that it is her father who needs her the most at that

time. This situation made Claudia think with dread how her life would be if her family will

not need her anymore. In a way, Claudia is holding on to her sick father to maintain her

sense of usefulness because aside from taking care of other people, Claudia doesn’t

know what she is as herself and as an individual anymore. Without her family Claudia

sense of self is lost.

This dependency to other people for identity is also explored, although in a more

graphic and intense way, by Adoraine Villanueva in her short story Broken Angel.

Yanny, the main character, is a product of a broken family. Her mother loved her father

too much yet he still left them for another girl. In a way, this situation made a big impact

in Yanny’s life. Due maybe to her parent’s separation, Yanny constantly looks for love

and she found it in the persona of Raniel. On the earlier part of their relationship Raniel
was the perfect boyfriend – sweet, thoughtful, caring. But even then, it is apparent that

Raniel is hesitant to make a lifetime commitment with Yanny. Instead of asking her hand

in marriage, he instead offers her to live-in with him. It was after this transition in their

relationship that the attitude of Raniel changed from being a thoughtful gentleman into a

brutal and violent man. He started to physically abuse Yanny at the slightest provocation

and misunderstanding but Yanny stayed blind to these because after every blow, Raniel

will ask her forgiveness and offers her material things. Yanny constantly do things that

will help strengthen their relationship, finally deciding to forego her pills with the thought

that a baby will eternally bond Raniel to her. She decided to surprise Raniel with the

news of her two-month pregnancy but contrary to what she had expected, he started

reacting to her news violently and as usual started treating her as a personal punching

bag despite her delicate situation. He even told her to get the baby aborted and because

of this order Yanny finally wakes up from her blind love for Raniel and she realize how

much of a fool she had become.

In contrary to Yanny’s weak and martyr character, her bestfriend Sybil is strong

and clear-headed. She advises Yanny early on to stop seeing Raniel and eventually to

leave him because of being an abusive partner. But Yanny didn’t listen to her and in the

end it is Yanny who’s to blame for prolonging her suffering under the hands of Raniel.

If finding identity in a patriarchal society is already difficult, it is doubly hard if one

is not in her home country. She does not only suffer gender discrimination but also racial

discrimination. Flip Gothic, a short story of Cecilia Brainard, shows exactly just that. In a

correspondence form between Nelia, an immigrant to the US and her mother in the

Philippines, they were able to uncover the identity crisis that Arminda, Nelia’s daughter is

suffering in the US. Even though Arminda grew up there, she still has a hard time fitting

in because she herself has no sense of self-identity. She can’t totally call herself as an

American and she can’t also totally call herself as a Filipino. Her defense mechanism
against this crisis is by rebelling against the authority of her parents. She dyes her hair,

wears Gothic clothes and could have experimented with marijuana just to be able to

form her self-identity. In order to put a stop to these actions, she was sent to live with her

grandmother in the Philippines. At first no one can understand her or guess her problem

and everyone is intimidated by her weird way. In turn Arminda finds her cousins geeky

and weird. But as time goes on, she can finally identify herself with her Filipino roots and

even started liking the people around her, especially her cousins and her grandmother.

Even though back in America she was well-provided for in material things, she lacks the

strong family bond that she finds in the Philippines and in a way this lack of family

closeness and her identity crisis leads to her problems. The story not only points out on

the representations of Filipina women in America but also the problem that most

immigrant families go through in their new country – alienation in the family circle itself.

Women nowadays enjoy an easier life because of the slowly emerging gender

equality, in compare to Filipinas during the colonial times. They not only suffer from lack

of education and unequal treatment in the society but they also had to face the

hardships of wars during the fight for Philippine independence. They suffer poverty,

hunger, danger and untimely deaths of their husbands and sons. But Filipinas are strong

and they can adapt to new things easily, even in their old age. In Adoraine Villanueva’s

Lilang the subject is a woman who adds another year in her old life and she is

reminiscing the years gone by. The beauty of the poem lies on the old woman’s longing

for death so that she can finally be join with the people she love and hold dear who went

to the next life ahead of her:

Her tired eyes

Speak of a deep longing to go –

To relive the glorious past,

To be with the people in her tales

 Of long ago.

In a metaphorical sense, women’s struggle against the shackles of patriarchal

traditions can be liken to a war. They ceaselessly fight for their right to live and to be free

– free from the heavy burden of stereotyping of woman’s role in the society. In Joi

Barrio’s To be a Woman is to Live at a Time of War, she detailed the hardship of being

a woman in a patriarchal society. Women’s image is always attached to the men in her

life and her position and safety is always in a precarious position. She is not safe

anywhere, not even in her own home for to challenge her husband means inviting

physical and/or verbal violence. Even walking the streets during the night is deemed

dangerous because it could invite unwanted sexual advances from men who prowl the

streets during nighttime. To be a woman really entails bravery to face the dangers that

surrounds her in all directions.

Attacks on patriarchy and the portrayal of man’s dominance over woman’s can

be treated with satire and humor so as to appeal to the common people. The

abovementioned works, except that of Taboclaon’s The Tale of Tonyo the Brave, all

contains melodramatic and sad tones. Barrios’ poem itself has an angry and accusing

tone. Tara Ft Sering’s How to Deal with June is a funny excerpt from her funny novel

Getting Better. The novel itself follows the adventures and experiences of modern

cosmopolitan persona who is having a bumpy ride in her relationship with her longtime

boyfriend. In How to Deal with June, the persona talks about the hectic marrying month

of June and she rethinks the course of her life when her friends are marrying off one by

one and her boyfriend is not even mentioning the word marriage. This prose is an easy

read because of the witty remarks of the persona and her refreshing observations in life.

Yet a noteworthy observation is that even though the persona is a self-profess modern

age woman who has a career and is independent, she is still hinged to her boyfriend’s

decisions and remarks. Her boyfriend has a power to undermine her self-confidence by
simply criticizing her looks and during arguments she just let her boyfriend rant without

saying a thing for fear that contradicting him will cause the end of their relationship. The

deep-seated patriarchy is evident on the last part of the story when she readily agrees to

the decision of her boyfriend to leave the church right after the wedding, without even

attending the reception. It just shows that the patriarchal tradition that was sown by the

Spaniards had become deeply-rooted in our culture that even in today’s modern age and

in a supposedly equal gender treatment in the society, Filipinas still unthinkingly allows

herself to be oppress by the male gender.

Similar to the style of Sering in using humor in her works, is Fanny H.B. Llego’s

A Prayer of Great Expectations satirically criticized the stereotyping of a Filipina’s role

as a wife. She listed some of the expectations of Filipinos in their wives and putting them

as her own expectations in a husband. The poem is funny in way but if taken seriously

one will see the great truths behind the funny and witty lines. The poem is well

constructed that it will not bore a reader and the message that it wants to put through is

already at the surface.

Ever since the Spaniards implemented upon the Filipinos the patriarchal

tradition, Filipino writers had fought back through their literatures, even though not

immediately. But still the written works was of a great help in disseminating ideas and

portraying the situation of women in our country. They not only portray but also reveal

the different representations of Filipinas in the society – as a daughter, a wife, a mother,

a grandmother, a partner, a supernatural being and a friend, among others. And despite

all the oppressions that Filipinas are undergoing, it is safe to say that we are already

awakening and starting to shake off the effects of patriarchy in the society. We are

fighting back and we will continue to do so until we achieve our desire for equality.
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Lara, Susan S. (1997). Letting Go and Other Stories. Philippines: University of
the Philippines Press.
Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin. (2000). Asian-American Literature: An Anthology. Illinois:
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