The Maria Clara Complex: How Did Conservative Spaniards Molded the Philippine Womanhood

Kas 118 (Women’s History of the Philippines) Essay 2

Any kind of talk about the how Filipino women should behave, valued, and respected will inevitably bring up the subject of Maria Clara, arguably the most famous female character in any Philippine literature. Despite living in a much more progressive present, a handful of people in our society still hold onto the idea that this Rizal character is the pinnacle of Filipina virtue: someone that should be a model for every woman. That Maria Clara defines what a Filipina should be. But a simple look at the state of women in precolonial Philippines already reveals that our Maria Clara Complex is quite un-Filipino.

Whenever someone would say “Dapat gumaya ka kay Maria Clara,” they usually mean that one must be modest, pure, timid, and pious. But if we are going to follow her characterization in Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, being like Maria Clara also means that one must not meddle with affairs only men traditionally do; that one must shut up and conform to what society dictates them to do. Be submissive and virgin. In comparison to what women of the Philippines were like before the arrival of the Spaniards, this is very much a downgrade. Aside from becoming a highly respected religious authority, precolonial women not only can be wives, but also prolific healers, skilled teachers, masterful politician, and many more.

But the Spaniards changed all of that. Shocked by how socially liberated and powerful our women used to be, especially inside the bedroom, they made plenty of efforts to reduce their worth and societal roles into such extremely limiting standards. Their secret weapon? Christianity, combined with European sexism. For 333 years that they occupied this country, they constructed a deliberate ploy of making us believe that the only things that a woman can do was to either serve God or to serve their husbands. Generally speaking, although they can still work outside, their ultimate fate was either they end up inside a house or a convent, nothing else. That in order for one to be morally and socially acceptable, one had to think and behave like them.

Determined to “civilize” the minds of the natives and mold them into their Western perspective, the Spanish clergy began teaching Christian morality and conservative conducts on women through their convents and monasteries, like the Colegio de Santa Potenciana in the late 16th century. All of the ideals that subjugated our women into submission and piety happened inside these monasteries, teaching them how to do chores like cooking, sewing, embroidering, etc. Some were taught to sing and dance. They were also taught to read and write, but only if it was all about Christian teachings. Reading anything that is not the Bible or the Doctrina Christiana was heretical.

The good manners and right conduct that the Spaniards taught mostly centered on the notion that a women must keep her purity lest she will be led astray by sin. Those rules ranged from not meeting with a man without a chaperone and not laughing loudly, to not touching and having sex with someone before marriage. It was all about controlling female sexuality. Modesto de Castro’s Urbana at Feliza — a book comprised of dialogues between two hypothetical sisters Urbana (who is studying in Manila) and Feliza (who lives in the countryside) talking about their folkways and mores — contains these examples of how women should behave. Even though the book was written in good faith to keep the society in order, it still perpetuated the longstanding tradition of European sexism and misogyny that we are still struggling to undo to this day.

All of these patriarchal values have everything to do with Spanish Catholics trying to emulate the Virgin Mary as the ultimate standard for all women: pure, immaculate, blameless, and timid. The misogynistic idea that women were wild beasts that need to be tamed was a commonly held opinion. Hence, the need to discipline them with these values that shaped Philippine womanhood up until 19th century, developing the image of Maria Clara.

However, to idolize this Rizal character and make her the ideal woman from a conservative lens is to miss the point of her characterization in Noli Me Tangere entirely. Maria Clara was a satire. Her traits like being weak, ignorant, vapid, naïve, submissive to patriarchal standards, extremely pious, represents Rizal’s critique of frailocracy and how friars keeping the natives ignorant was what keeping the Philippines backwards. In his letter to the women of Malolos, Rizal expressed his sentiments on how he found courageous women willing to stand up against the church to be quite rare, for the most elite women that he knew (people like Maria Clara) became ignorant due to indoctrination of religious codes of the church.

GMA’s modern adaptation of Rizal’s Noli, Maria Clara at Ibarra, perfectly illustrates the backwardness of 19th century Philippines when it comes to the status of women. The character of Klay (played by Barbie Forteza), representing the lens of the modern progressive Filipina, is flabbergasted by the extent of Western patriarchy entrenched into the psyche of the Noli society. They were resistant to enlightenment and frowned upon Klay’s feminist ideals, embodying Alejandro Joronovsky’s quote, “Birds who were born inside cages think that flying is an illness.”

Maria Clara was not supposed to be the Filipina standard, and will never be. Attempting to make her the role model not only limits what a Filipina could become, but also forgetting her power that she yielded before the arrival of her European masters. Sure, it is up to her choice if she desires to be a mother and a wife, or a servant of the church. But beyond the confines of household and convent, she is more than those.

Sources:

• Camacho, Maria Svetlana T. 2007. “Woman’s Worth: The Concept of Virtue in the Education of Women in Spanish Colonial Philippines.” Philippine Studies 55, №1 53–87.
• Cruz, Denise. 2012. “Nationalism, Modernity, and Feminism’s Haunted Interactions.” In Transpacific Femininites: The Making of a Modern Filipina, by Denise Cruz, 67–109. North Carolina: Duke University Press.
• Owen, Norman G. 2000. “Maria Clara and the Market: Women and Change in the 19th Century Philippines.” Asian Studies, Vol. 36, №1 24–60.
• Reyes, Soledad S. 1999. “Urbana at Feliza.” Philippine Studies 47, №1 3–29.

Published on January 22, 2023