UIC Research Journal Print ISSN 1656-0604AND

ACCOUNTANCY • Online ISSN

BUSINESS 2244-6532
ADMINISTRATION
Vol. 20 No. 2 October 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.17158/497
International Peer Reviewed Faculty Research Journal Available online at http://research.uic.edu.ph/ojs/

MOTHER VERSUS DAUGHTER: IDENTIFYING THE FEMALE

ARCHETYPES AND THEIR CONFLICTS IN NICK JOAQUIN’S
“THE WOMAN WITH TWO NAVELS”

Tara Crishia Victorino

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2535-824X
[email protected]
University of the Immaculate Conception

Joycelyn Espana
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6420-4024
[email protected]
University of the Immaculate Conception

Julaila Velez
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0307-5473
[email protected]
University of the Immaculate Conception

Virgilind Palarca
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3764-024x
[email protected]
University of the Immaculate Conception

ABSTRACT

The Philippines has a long history of being conquered by the male-dominated

west. We see evidences of these patriarchal politics through our literature. Most of
these works are included in the Filipino literary canon. But there is an argument
whether or not these required reading which actually perpetuated the sexist myths
that prevailed in our society. Every after year, the students are presented with
material teeming with sexual stereotypes that students do not easily recognize.
Nick Joaquin is typically found in required reading lists. His award-winning novel
“The Woman who had Two Navels” (1961) has been read in classrooms usually
in the patriotic context. The aim of this study is to reread this classic literary
masterpiece, and to identify the female archetypes present within, and to show
their anti and pro feminist implications. The researchers used textual analysis

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to identify the images of women characters present in the novel, juxtaposing

them against Female Archetypes based on Johnson’s classifications. Through
textual analysis, the researchers provided textual evidences to support the claims.
Tables were used as tally sheets. The results showed that the female protagonists
depict multiple female archetypes that made the mother-daughter relationship
of Concha and Connie very complex. Their contradicting archetypes prove
that there is a male constructed competition between them. The novel is clearly
more than just Joaquin’s account of the travails of post-Spanish Philippines. It
is a reflection of a universal phenomenon of the male constructed competition
between women. The archetypes are clearly antifeminist and therefore the novel
should be read with care especially in the classroom.

KEYWORDS

Female archetype, conflicts, Nick Joaquin, Philippines

INTRODUCTION

Literature both reflects and helps create reality. It is through their preservation
in works of art that we know what the stereotypes and archetypes are and have
been (Ferguson, 1973). In effect, knowing these images influences our view of
reality and even our behavior.
Beauvoir (1940) tells us that a woman, from the very beginning, is taught
that to be valuable she must try to please; she must make herself an object for men,
and so she must renounce her autonomy. In her family life, she is introduced to the
relative rank and the hierarchy of sexes. She is made to realize that she is to become
one day a woman like her mother and she will never be the sovereign father. The
historical and literary culture to which she belongs, and the songs and legends with
which she is lulled to sleep help to confirm superiority of the male in the eyes of
the little girl. It is stamped on her mind that the supreme necessity is to charm
the masculine heart. She equips herself for this by adoring herself. The delights of
passivity are made to seem desirable to the young girl by parents and educators,
and through books and myths. This indoctrination even continues in her marriage
and sexual initiation. If in fact society is ‘male,’ then literature must also be ‘male.’
Though writings about females by males may be suspect, all literature, even women’s
writings about women may also need to be re-read (Savitt, 1982).

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Unfortunately, most of what our students read in school perpetuates

the sexist myths that prevail in our society. Every after year, the students are
presented with material that inculcates the male-superior/female-inferior tenet.
No questions are asked. Everything is accepted. Sexual stereotypes are blatant in
books and students cannot refute the inherent sexist undertone.
Savitt (1982) proposes that one can work within the framework of a negative
role-model and study it precisely for what it says about the nature of stereotypes.
But, one must be able to recognize these stereotypes and understand what the
characters and author are trying to say. Thus, the students who will eventually
become teachers must be equipped with some very practical knowledge of what
is in effect, a manipulative device.
The general objective of this study is to re-read a classic piece of literature
that is available to secondary and tertiary level learners and analyze the text
through a Feminist lens using the framework of Archetypal Criticism. The text
in question is a masterpiece of Philippine literary great Nick Joaquin – “The
Woman who had Two Navels” (1961).
The study of archetypes was first developed by psychologist Carl Jung.
Archetypes are models of people, behaviors or personalities. Jung suggested that
the psyche was composed of three components: the ego, the personal unconscious
and the collective unconscious – meaning that these models are innate, universal
and hereditary (Friest, 2009). Archetypal criticism argues that archetypes
determine the form and function of literary works; that a text’s meaning is shaped
by cultural and psychological myths (Abrams, 1999).
One of the most ancient archetypes in literature is devoted to the quest of a
young person for identity. Most often the youthful protagonist or commonly called
‘the hero’ progresses from innocence to experience, after having endured a period of
initiation. If the young hero is female, the purpose of such novels of development
is often to prepare her for marriage which is a prevalent theme in fairy tales and
Victorian novels. In many such novels the quest for initiation becomes aborted and
in many instances turns to despair and madness (Moss, 1982).
The mad woman in despair, one of Nick Joaquin’s famous archetypes, is
found in his short story, Summer Solstice. It is one of the most anthologized
short stories of Joaquin, and also the most critiqued work. Here, the woman is
seen by the man as unstable and dangerous. Most analyses, especially the earlier
ones, would proclaim that the short story is about the triumph of women such
as the submission of Don Paeng to Dona Lupeng (Salonga, 2007). While the
message is explicit, the recognition of the women’s ancient power as the “source
of life, maker and therefore ruler of men” is implicit (Locsin, 1963; Casper, 1966;

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Francia, 1993; Salonga, 2007).

On the contrary, Ventura (1992, 1994) and Kintanar (1992) interpret this
seemingly pro woman short story as pseudo-feminism because, for them, the
pro-feminist symbolism offered by the season of the story, Summer Solstice is
unauthentic. For these critics, the women in the short story, though they received
some sort of power through the invocation of the spirit, were not really empowered
permanently because the period of superiority only happens at a specific time of
the year. What this suggests is that the next day, when the Tatarin madness is over,
Don Paeng resumes his position of power, and Entoy beats Amada again (Ventura,
1992; Evangelista, 1996). While the enchantment could mean liberation and
independence from masculine domination, it was ironically only short lived.
Given his body of work and tenure in Philippine Literature’s cream of the
crop, it is a given for Joaquin’s works to be scrutinized under the Feminist lens.
According to Ventura (1994), Joaquin wrote within the context of the patriarchal
interpretation of the dual nature of woman-woman – Madonna as Whore and
Woman as Eve; God’s gift to men and yet man’s temptress (Evangelista, 1996).
This close reading aims to find the same depiction in the novel “The Woman
who had Two Navels.”

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

Using feminist archetypes or personalities, the researchers aimed to identify

the images of the women, particularly the two main female characters – the mother
and daughter in the novel, “The Woman who had Two Navels”. Therefore, this
study sought to present the female archetypes reflected by the novel’s women
protagonists, the interaction of the archetypes in the story, and the implication of
these relationships to the context of the story.

FRAMEWORK

Robert Johnson (2002) identified several feminine personality archetypes

stemming from Jung’s theory, which is the guiding framework of this study. It
includes:

1) The Queen/Mother,
2) The Inquisitive Nurturing Princess,

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3) The Martyr,
4) The Manipulator,
5) The Saboteur,
6) The Damsel in Distress,
7) The Hetaira,
8) The Electra Child,
9) The Femme Fatale,
10) The Seductress
11) The Prostitute,
12) Daddy’s Little Princess,
13) The Amazon,
14) Adventurer/Heroine,
15) The Bitch,
16) The Defiant Rebel,
17) The Victim,
18) The Wounded Child,
19) The Medial,
20) The Artist,
21) The Fortune Teller,
22) The Gossip,
23) The Innocent, and lastly
24) The Orphan.

In previous readings, the novel is often seen as a story of the Filipino

“upper middle class expatriates” (Abalos, 2006) who settled down in Hong
Kong due to the pressure and intensity of the ambiance set by the Americans
during their colonization in the Philippines. The story as others put it simply
is about nationalism. If Connie Escobar is seen as the metaphor for the country
Philippines, then Señora Concha de Vidal is the metaphor for America since the
setting is during the American colonization in the Philippines (Macla, 2011).

METHOD

The researchers used textual analysis to identify the images of Women

characters in the stories, juxtaposing them against Feminist Archetypes based on
Johnson’s classifications. Textual evidence was used to support these claims. Tables
were used as tally sheets to code the textual material; marking the keywords and

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placing them in the categories identified.

After the personalities have been identified, the female characters were
pitted against each other according to their conflicting archetypes using a second
table. The conflicts between these archetypes were analyzed using the theory at
hand.

Matrix 1. Identification of archetypes

Name of Character Type of Archetype Textual Evidence

Female Character 1 Archetype 1

Archetype 2 (if any)
Female Character 2 Archetype 1
Archetype 2 (if any)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The table below clearly shows that the leading female protagonists in the
story are not merely one-dimensional stereotypes but are multi-layered characters
that move in and out of Jung’s basic feminine quarternity of the Self, Shadow,
Animus, and Persona. There are archetypes projected by the character themselves
as some are from the perspectives of other characters, and the rest are the third
person’s or narrator’s point of view.
The following analysis explains the subtext of these social constructs
affecting the reader. Are these feminine archetypes fair in their portrayal of the
women within the context of the story and in general?

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Table 1. Feminine archetypes portrayed by women in the novel

Name of Character Type of Archetype Excerpts of Textual Evidence

Señora Concha de Hetaira ...she was the ancient goddess of the land...
Vidal (the mother) she was fully awake, completely alive – but
without flurry.
Her poise was her verve; she did what she
wanted without the bravado attitude.
She was an active Clubwoman; in the
mornings Paco drove her to hospitals,
orphanages, committees, conventions,
cultural lectures... she took him for tours
of the city so he might savor the style and
swagger of (Manila)...
...but this absence of her family seemed
natural enough since she spoke of them very
freely and so often...
Femme Fatale The señora was in furs too; she was belted
and up in a white fur jacket and wore a polka-
Seductress dotted scarf around her neck and gold coins
on her ears.
She came herself to his hotel...
...he fled her and she sat still... smiling at his
back... she tracked him down
Amazon Paco liked her flat partial sandpaper
ruthlessness...
Saboteur “Oh she didn’t do that. I did it for her. I had
to.” And dropping her voice as she leaned
intimately closer...
Victim ...abandoning a boozy father whom she had
quietly supported since she was fifteen...
Connie Escobar Innocent “When I was a little girl I thought
(the daughter) everybody else had two navels”
Victim “I was the Eve of the apple at five years old;
that was when I found.”
Wounded Child If you beget a monster of a child it could
prove you were rather monstrous yourself…
Can you imagine what kind of a childhood
it was? If it was a childhood at all...”

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Damsel in Distress “So I swept a most eligible man off his feet
– and married him...”
Daddy’s Little Girl “Her father’s in government... she was
in the payroll although she was just a
schoolgirl...”
“Neither her father nor I had ever punished
her before...”
Defiant Rebel “She went off – simply disappeared. For a
week we had the police looking for her...”
“...she seemed to feel nothing; sitting there
with her hands folded on her lap and her
painted face a blank and that repulsive dress
making her look like a cheap taxi dancer...”
Femme Fatale Her eyes had slitted with the sly look of her
and god.
Seductress “If she’s here now it’s to chase him some
more...”
Bitch He gaped in amazement at her vicious face.
She said, spitting out the words: did he
think she was as easy a job as her mother?
Manipulator When she told him she had two navels he
believed her at once: she seemed so urgently,
so desperately serious – ...And she cried that
it was urgent: her whole life depended on
it...
Medial She bought a doll at a shop that she needed
for a thank-offering...

The story started with a conversation between Connie, the daughter, and a
veterinarian; a horse doctor (Pepe Monson) that she met in Hong Kong, about
her desire to have one of her navels surgically removed. The doctor was surprised
but nonetheless believed her tale as she revealed her childhood, her marriage, her
parents, particularly her mother.
She began her narrative by saying “When I was a little girl I thought everybody
else had two navels.” On the surface, this statement may clearly depict the archetype
of the INNOCENT. According to Johnson (2002) the innocent simply speaks
what is in the purest form and has no sense as to what they are saying or the
potential impact on the listeners. She further explains to the doctor how this

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‘innocence’ was robbed from her at the tender age of five when she discovered
that not everyone has two navels, upon seeing her doll Minnie only possessing
one bellybutton, thus presenting herself as the VICTIM.

“I was the Eve of the apple at five years old; that was when I found.”

And from this ‘pain’ of being robbed of her innocence equates to her
justification that she was a WOUNDED CHILD. This archetype according to
Johnson (2002) has been wounded. This wound may have indeed come from
a mature male whom she depended upon for training who let her down, or
an absentee male who did not appear at a critical moment, or a mother who
constantly rebuked her for her ‘tomboyish’ ways; or perhaps strangeness.

If you beget a monster of a child it could prove you were rather monstrous
yourself... Can you imagine what kind of a childhood it was? If it was a
childhood at all...”

Here, Connie further validates her pain by referencing to her parents’ alleged
resentment of her ‘freakiness’. In the story, Connie describes her parents as people
with reputations to keep – “Father’s one of the sacred elders in the government,
mother’s a famous beauty...”

She continues that she grew up insecure; relating that she had more worries
than the average teenager – they had pimples while she had a second navel.

“...when you know how just one pimple can be such a torment: so think
what I went through”... “My one big scare when it became stylish to bare
the midriff. Imagine! They would have been like pig’s eyes peering out...”

She finished her sad story with what seems like a classic fairy tale of her
being able to marry someone of stature despite her condition, making her an
ideal picture of a DAMSEL IN DISTRESS.

“So I swept a most eligible man off his feet – and married him...”

Here it is seen that Connie has portrayed herself as the Innocent, Wounded
Child who is a Victim of a natural circumstance and therefore naturally becomes
a Damsel a Distress in need of her knight in shining armor.

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The table showed that Connie herself metamorphoses into ten different
archetypes – the four of which that had already been discussed were all self-
perceptions. It can be observed that the next two archetypes are quite opposites
of the ones that she had projected.
The reader is introduced to this other side of Connie in the succeeding
paragraphs of the story when her mother Concha de Vidal told the doctor that
Connie’s confessions were all lies. Connie in fact doesn’t have two navels. These
are all delusions of her daughter. Here she begins to reveal her daughter’s character
through her perspective. In the eyes of her mother, Connie is nothing more than
a DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL and a DEFIANT REBEL – a spoiled brat.

“Her father’s in government... she was in the payroll although she was just
a schoolgirl...”
“Neither her father nor I had ever punished her before...”

The preceding lines were spoken by Concha and it revealed that her daughter,
like many daughters of wealthy people of their time and place, is privileged with
monetary opportunities and educational pursuits. Yet Concha also revealed that
despite this advantage, Connie was ungrateful of their wealth.

“She went off – simply disappeared. For a week we had the police looking
for her...”
“...she seemed to feel nothing; sitting there with her hands folded on her lap
and her painted face a blank and that repulsive dress making her look like
a cheap taxi dancer...”

Concha relates how her daughter reacted to people’s accusation that her
father was nepotistic and corrupt to use public funds to send her to a private
school. Concha sees this as misplaced righteousness and therefore adds to her
perception that her daughter is indeed a rebel.
Up to this point, the reader is given two sides of Connie – the victim and
the villain; the former as perceived by Connie herself, and the latter as perceived
by her mother. The conflict between the mother and daughter is becoming
more evident. The metaphor of the two umbilical cords is taking shape as the
archetypes of the mother and daughter are juxtaposed against each other and a
big gap exists therein.
Señora Concha de Vidal seems to be depicted in the unmotherly-mother
archetype – as HETAIRA, AMAZON, FEMME FATALE/SEDUCTRESS, and

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SABOTEUR.
The Hetaira is actually the opposite of the nurturing Queen Mother. She
is still a queen; acts like one does not provide some womb or a safe environment
for her subjects but instead puts her interest in being a friend or confidant to the
male and encouraging him to expand his horizons to the broadest of possible
perspectives (Johnson, 2002). The hetaira in Concha’s character is very evident
in the following passages:

...she was the ancient goddess of the land… she was fully awake, completely
alive – but without flurry. Her poise was her verve; she did what she wanted
without the bravado attitude.
She was an active clubwoman; in the mornings Paco drove her to hospitals,
orphanages, committees, conventions, cultural lectures... she took him for
tours of the city so he might savor the style and swagger of (Manila)...
...but this absence of her family seemed natural enough since she spoke of
them very freely and so often...

Then still in Paco’s perspective, Concha is also seen as an AMAZON:

Paco liked her flat partial sandpaper ruthlessness...

While he is smitten, he is also intimidated and threatened and so we finally

see the FEMME FATALE and SEDUCTRESS archetype is seen at work:

The señora was in furs too; she was belted up in a white fur jacket and wore
a polka-dotted scarf around her neck and gold coins on her ears.
She came herself to his hotel...
...he fled her and she sat still... smiling at his back... she tracked him
down

And finally, Concha herself reveals herself as a SABOTEUR confessing

details about her daughter’s marriage:

“Oh she didn’t do that. I did it for her. I had to.” And dropping her voice
as she leaned intimately closer...

This is contrary to Connie’s earlier account that “she swept someone off his
feet.” Here she divulges in a conniving tone that it wasn’t Connie’s rebelliousness

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that led to her freedom but it was in fact Concha who set her free to remove her
out of the way. There we see how power play was perceived in two different ways
– by the mother and by the daughter.
But a second reading of story reveals another aspect of Connie’s character in
the point of view of the narrator – that she’s also a BITCH, FEMME FATALE
and/or SEDUCTRESS, a MANIPULATOR, and a MEDIAL.

He gaped in amazement at her vicious face. She said, spitting out the words:
did he think she was as easy a job as her mother?

The narrator described Connie’s anger at this point of the story when Paco
Texeira, her mother’s unofficial social consort, and rumored to be her boytoy,
attempted sexual advances on her. For Johnson (2002), this is an indication of
the angry BITCH archetype. The Bitch thrives in momentary competition. Her
anger may come from many places, but commonly is based in a perspective that
the “patriarchal system” had fixed the game, and that is unfair. It is clear in the
subtext of her words that she has a form of bitterness for her mother. She sees her
as defiled and therefore rejects her as her mother. To see herself as ‘better’ than
the one who conceived and raised her is about competing with something that
she has to fight for the rest of her life. It is an epic struggle for Connie to get out
of her mother’s shadow.
Then the narrator gave us another aspect of Connie with the following
lines:

Her eyes had slitted with the sly look of her god.

Here, Connie is described as a Femme Fatale. From the one being seduced
to being the SEDUCTRESS. Again, this may be another one of her responses
to compete with her mother when it comes to the affection of Paco. At first, she
rejects him then later on falls for him, as confirmed by her mother’s description
of her:

“If she’s here now it’s to chase him some more...”

Concha here was referring to Connie’s trip to Hong Kong; believing that
she’s in the country to run after Paco.
From the very moment that Concha is revealed in the story, she has said
nothing to confirm her daughter’s portrayal of herself – hence denying and

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refuting everything that Connie revealed about her past.

Based on Johnson’s archetypes, Connie also fits the MANIPULATOR
and the MEDIAL molds. The Manipulator is a young woman who never has a
good view of the over-all situation. She doesn’t trust life, and so consciously or
unconsciously plots as to how she can use things to force environment to focus
on her and her importance.
From the moment, the reader is introduced to Connie, she presents herself
as INNOCENT but a close reading of her discourse would suggest that she is in
fact a MANIPULATOR as evidenced in this text:

When she told him (the doctor) she had two navels he believed her at once:
she seemed so urgently, so desperately serious... And she cried that it was
urgent: her whole life depended on it...

Connie knows how to play the doctor to get what she wants; the same game
she has been playing all her life to get what she wanted. The rebellion to her
parents, the seduction of Paco, her helplessness to her husband – were all part of
her act. And because she knew this, hence she is a MEDIAL.
According to Johnson (2002), a medial is a channel from the external world
to her internal world form the collective unconscious to potential consciousness.
She has some Hecate or witch-like qualities about her in that she knows what she
knows. She is aware of her delusion. She has her story intact, and she’s using it to
get what she wanted.
But what is subtext of this desire to detach from the umbilical cord? Why
are there two in her perspective? The remaining parts of this paper shall explain
the feminist subtext that lies within.
Beauvoir (1940) argues that women are not born with a maternal instinct.
Through diaries and literary examples, she argues that many women are fearful,
anxious, and distressed about the prospect of bearing and rearing a child. Most
often, women undertake motherhood to fulfill an obligation to the marriage
contract or as a means to feel superior in one area of their lives. If she feels
herself always dependent upon her husband, then by having a child a woman
establishes herself, for a time, as the essential and necessary being in relation to
the dependent child. However in either case – fulfillment of an obligation or
establishment of her own superiority – women endanger the well-being of their
children. If a free and independent woman does not choose motherhood, then
the mother runs the risk of infantilizing or abusing her children. If they are boys,
she might take her revenge upon them, knowing that one day they will benefit

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from privileges that the mother does not enjoy. Little girls will be overprotected,
for the mother might feel guilt and shame for bringing a girl into a world in
which she will become a victim, like her mother, of male domination (Hansen,
Jennifer).
In the patriarchal scheme of feminization of the girl-child, women, especially
mothers, are seen to act as accomplices. Traditional notions about the mystical
mother-child bond and the medical and psycho-analytical theories on the child’s
need for mother’s care all establish that it is primarily women who are responsible
for child-rearing and socialization. Therefore, mothers’ attitudes have a crucial
role in gender construction. Being themselves patriarchally trained, mothers
incline to instill in their children the same values they have imbibed. By their
differentiating and preferential behavior and labor division among the male and
female children, they firmly implant in the girl-child a sense of inferiority and
insecurity regarding her gender; her perspective is diligently kept under erasure
(Mathew, 2010).
So we see this evidently in the story when Concha reveals herself also as a
VICTIM when she was a child:

...abandoning a boozy father whom she had quietly supported since she was
fifteen...

As a girl who grew up wounded and victimized, Concha passes on this

‘curse’ of being a woman in a man’s world to her daughter by detaching herself
from the womb. Vice versa, Connie feels the same struggle and therefore she
also wishes to cut off the ties that connect her to her mother. The fact that she is
agitated with her ‘make-believe’ two navels emphasizes her feelings that she feels
strongly connect – by fate, by circumstance, by social construct – to her mother.
She is aware that she is going to become her mother in the future and so the
competition to be better or who’s better is at play in the story.
Contrary to romantic notions about motherhood, pregnancy is actually a
detachment rather than an attachment of the mother and the child according to
Beauvoir (Hansen, 2000). Pregnancy is above all a drama that is acted out within
the woman herself. She feels it as at once an enrichment and an injury; the fetus
is a part of her body, and it is a parasite that feeds on it; she possesses it, and she
is possessed by it; it represents the future and, carrying it, she feels herself vast as
the world; but this very opulence annihilates her, she feels that she herself is no
longer anything. A new life is going to manifest itself and justify its own separate
existence, she is proud of it; but she also feels herself tossed and driven, the play-

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their Conflicts in Nick Joaquin’s “The Woman with Two Navels” Velez & Palarca

thing of obscure forces.

With the given perspective, it seems that this transcendence and
metamorphosis of sorts continues to happen for the mother-daughter characters
of Concha and Connie. There is a rejection from both parties – a hatred of some
kind that they cannot fully understand. This is exactly what Jung was stating in
his collective consciousness theory of archetypes. The gender stereotypes have
been planted. The stage is set for the battle of the fittest among the females to be
chosen for the good seed.
Typically, mothers and daughters compete for the father’s attention. But in
this story, the father figure is an institution not to be questioned or challenged,
therefore defeating or ceasing any competition at all. So the contest comes to
life in the triangulation with Paco – the lover. Paco now here became the MALE
to be pleased in the context of anti-feminist and the male to be conquered in
profeminist empowerment.
Unfortunately, society has been successful in establishing that men do not
need women as much as women need men. Men soon lose interest in women
who lived to serve them. Once a man has won the heart of a woman, she holds
little interest for him. He may withdraw all affection, which placed the woman
in a precarious position.
“The Woman who had Two Navels” is clearly more than just about Joaquin’s
account of the cultural and political travails of post-Spanish Philippines. This novel
is a reflection of a universal phenomenon of the male constructed competition
between mothers and daughters. The archetypes are clearly antifeminist and
therefore the novel should be read with care especially in the secondary level
classroom.
There is no doubt that the novel is a literary masterpiece in form. In the
historical aspect, it paints a poignant picture of the Philippines’s struggle to be
free. But more than just being historical metaphors, Concha and Connie should
also be read as real people in the context of a man-dominated society. There is a
lot to learn from Concha and Connie’s twisted relationship.
This close reading offers additional insight into the study of relationships
between mothers who are also daughters, and daughters, who see a possible
future in their mothers. Literature after all is not just a dogmatic reflection of
male-dominated history but also a way for readers to inquire about the state of
being a woman in society.

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Victorino,
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AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Velez & Palarca Education and Social Science

LITERATURE CITED

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Abrams, M.H.
1999 Archetypal criticism. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Fort
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Evangelista, S.
1996 Deconstructing the patriarchy. Philippine Studies. 44( 2), 280-283.
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Fergusom, M.A.
1973 Images of women in literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Fiest, J. & Friest, G.

2009 Theories of personality. The 12 Common Archetypes. New York
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Joaquin, N.
1992 Prose and poems. Quezon City.

Johnson, R.
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Kintanar, T.
1992 Women reading… Feminist perspective on Philippine literary text.
Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

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Macla, M.N.
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Mathew, R.T.
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Salonga, A.
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Savitt, J.
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