Philippine Literature Assignment: A Scholarly Analysis of

To the Man I Married by Angela Manalang-Gloria and

The Spouse by Luis Dato
Submitted by:
Aguila, John Raphael Y.
Astronomo, Alyanna Denise G.
Baldomero, Mayryll Grace B.
Baluyut, Aerielle Alaina F.
Bansil, Avegayle Marie J.
Barro, Lorenz M.
Basco, Eunice Aurelle T.
Cabral, Ian Lindley C.
Cayago, Aira Mina A.
Ching, Jardine Mariel L.
(2AMT)

Submitted to:
Mr. Pablito M. Marasigan, Jr.

TO THE MAN I MARRIED

A.

Introduction/ Background of Author and Poem

Angela Manalang-Gloria was a lyric poet, pianist, and editor who loved reading at an

early age. She initially took up pre-law subjects in UP but shifted to liberal arts later on,
graduating summa cum laude with an A.B. in philosophy in 1929. She worked with the
Philippine Collegian in UP as a literary editor where she met Celedonio P. Gloria, the man she
married, who was the editor-in-chief at that time. She was a courageous woman and passionate
poet who poured her emotions in words as seen in her Revolt from the Hymen, a controversial
poem during her time which spoke up against marital rape. Her literary career slowly died down
due to her poor health and a tremendous loss with the death of her husband in World War II.
This is the time she began to shift her attention

and soon became completely focused on

business to support her three children as a single parent. The flame that drove her into creative
writing was extinguished.

Her poem To The Man I Married talks about Celedonio P. Gloria, her husband who
unfortunately died after an ambush by Japanese soldiers. She was greatly traumatized by this
event. From an idealist who lived a colorful life early on, she became a pragmatist after being
faced with sorrows and realities. To The Man I Married reveals this realistic side of her since it is
unlike other poems that elevate love in a fantastic manner.

B. First Impressions
Our first interpretation about the poem To The Man I Married was different from the
final interpretation that we have, given that we did not know the background of the poet herself
and we were not supported by any research that time. It was also the first time we read the
poem as a group.

In the first stanza, the woman described how dependent she was to the man. In the line
You are my earth and all that earth implies and The gravity that ballasts me in space gave us
a hint that she was somewhat chained to her husband and to leave him will be a great loss
because he is the one who sustains her.

In the second stanza, the woman seemed discontented about her life. Even if her
husband fulfills all her earthly needs, she still desires for someone else.

The line I lift my

keening thoughts to another one gave us an initial impression that she was yearning for
another man and that she was not completely happy with her marriage because her heart

wanted somebody else who she can never have. We immediately judged her as a woman who
only seeks for dependence and love from men. For the line You who are earth, O never doubt
that I need you no less because I need the sky! we interpreted the sky as a representation of
the man that she can only dream of and earth was represented by her husband. We thought
that the freedom of the woman to love the man that she wanted was impossible given that she
was already married to another man.

In the third stanza, we thought that the love of the woman for her husband cannot be
compared with the love that she has for her lover. In the last part of the poem, she confirms that
the love that she can give for her husband was only limited and would not last forever.

C. Poem Structure/ Form

The poem written by Angela Manalang-Gloria has four stanzas separated into two parts.
The first part contains the first two stanzas, an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines)
respectively. The octave has a rhyming scheme of ABABCDCD while the sestet has a rhyming
scheme of EFEFGG. For the second part, both of the stanzas are quatrains (four lines). The first
has a rhyming scheme of ABAB while the second has a rhyming scheme of ACDC.

Furthermore, the form of the poem, To the Man I Married is considered as a dramatic
poem as it consists of the speakers own thoughts or spoken statements which can be evidently
seen in its title. There is no story being told yet it is full of the speakers emotions and feelings of
love.

D. Poetic Analysis
I.
1. First Stanza
You are my earth and and all that earth implies:
In this line, the persona describes her husband, or rather man she married, in a
metaphor that compares him to the earth, which explicitly says that the man is so important to
her that he means the whole world, as in everything, to her.
The gravity that ballasts me in space,
Like gravity which holds everything steady on the ground and prevents all things from
floating away in space, the man for her is someone who ballasts or provides her stability in life.
The air I breathe, the land that stills my cries

For her to compare the man to air is to say that she cannot live without him just like how
she cannot live and breathe without air. She also sees the man as someone who is always there
to land on to for comfort and to calm her during times of sadness.
For food and shelter against devouring days.
In here, she implicitly states her dependence to the man as the provider of her daily
basic needs in life.
You are the earth whose orbit marks my way
And sets my north and south, my east and west.
She describes in this line how the man ,who means everything to her, is the person who
who gives direction or purpose in her life, like a guide she relies on to follow and obey.
You are the final, elemental clay
The driven heart must turn to for its rest.
In the metaphoric description final, elemental clay, she means that the man is both the
first or primary thing and the last piece she needs to complete her life. It is in him where her
restless or beating heart only finds rest, meaning he is supposed to be the only one or thing her
heart, or rather love, belongs to.

In general, the first stanza is a figurative description of the persona about the man to whom she
is married. From a marxist perspective, it can be clearly understood how dependent she is to
the man and how significant he is to her life and to her entirety. The mans image in this stanza
is glorified as someone who provides for, guides, steadies, and gives comfort to the woman, and
without him, she cannot stand on her own.

2. Second Stanza
If in your arms that hold me now so near
I lift my keening thoughts to another one,
In these lines, she states that while she is with her husband, shelifts her thoughts to
something else; therefore, possibly implying that she is thinking of someone else from above,
someone like God.
As trees long rooted to the earth uprear
Their quickening leaves and flowers to the sun,
Upon her keen thinking, she connotes that although the trees rely on the Earth to stand,
they owe their leaves and flowers to the sun who, despite being far away or not directly with
them, provides for what these trees need, just like how she relies on her husband to stand, but
there is someone else far greater, albeit not literally or directly with her, who is providing for her
more than even her Earth, or rather husband, can give.

You who are earth, O never doubt that I

Need you no less because I need the sky!
She then tells her man that he is still the world for her, and that he should never think
less of how much she needs him, but she also wishes for him to understand that there will be
something more important than him that she needs, which is God, who is symbolized by her as
her sky, an encompassing entity who is not physically present like her man but is still there and
provides for her.

In this stanza, the woman basically implies that although she sees her husband as
someone essential and very important to her life, there is someone else more important for her,
and that someone is God.

II.
3. Third Stanza
I can not love you with a love
That outcompares the boundless sea,
The first two lines are very literal. Here, she expresses her love as finite or limited. She
uses a metaphorical line, that outcompares the boundless sea, which functions as a
supportive line that tells us that her love can not be greater than a sea which is free and has no
barriers to keep it in place. It simply gives us an understanding of the limits of her love for her
husband.

For that were false, as no such love

And no such ocean can ever be.
The next two lines of the stanza explain that her love can never be everlasting because
in reality, there is no such thing as boundless love that exists in this world. In the second
metaphorical line, and no such ocean can ever be, the ocean symbolizes love in general. It
means that no love in this earth can ever be infinite. Even something as great as the ocean has
boundaries and limitations. She rejects the idea of the boundless sea that was mentioned in
the first two lines of the third stanza.

The authors mood during this stanza was numb, discontented, and gloomy. This stanza
shows how practical and earthly of a woman she is. From her story background, she loves her
husband; but as a woman and a person, she has dreams that she wanted to reach but couldnt

because of the obligation and commitment of being a mother and a wife which describes the
gloomy and discontented mood of the stanza and the finite love for her husband.

4. Fourth Stanza
But I can love you with a love
As finite as the wave that dies
The first two lines describe the womans love as limited as the wave that dies. It means
that the woman can only love her husband to that extent and cannot go beyond that because
nothing on Earth lasts forever and there is no such thing as infinite love..

And dying holds from crest to crest

The blue of everlasting skies.
Crest to crest means from birth to death or something that starts and ends like life. It is a
fact that the woman and husband are mortal beings, and that love will soon just come to an end
when they die. On the contrary, the blue of the ocean waves reflect the blue of the everlasting
sky, creating an illusion of perpetuity in the afterlife; making their love resemble like that of the
sky, who is God- eternal and infinite.

The main idea of the fourth stanza is eternal love. The stanza compares the womans
love with that of the wave, which represents the love of the woman to her husband. It grows and
then dies, but the love will always be there as long as there is the ocean. The ocean would be
something seemingly vast and infinite but would still, in the end, have its limits; it reflects the
blue of everlasting skies which implies that even if she can only love her husband to a certain
extent (limited), it is eternal for their mortal love is a reflection of the love of God, which is
overflowing and has no limits.

E. Analysis as a Whole/ Conclusion

Overall, the title of the poem already shows what it is all about. It speaks about the
feelings of a woman, most likely the author, to her husband. These feelings refer to a real love
that is not exaggerating, a real love that exists here on Earth and is not everlasting. In the first
part, she described her husband as her Earth so basically her life revolves around him. In the
second part, however, she expressed that her love for her husband cannot be equated to the
love that the Most High can give that is why she has stated that theres an end to this love. But it

does not change the fact that she greatly loves him and assured that she will love him until the
end of time.

THE SPOUSE
A. Introduction/Background of Author and Poem
Born in the year 1906 on the 4 of July, Luis Guevara Dato is an educator, journalist,
th

columnist, and former mayor of Baao, Camarines. He is most known as a first-generation

Filipino poet who has attained great recognition in the Philippine Literary History with his
English-written poems.

Excluding the prescribed courses in American and English literature in his secondary
and tertiary education, Dato did not take any formal education in poetry-writing. Rather, he
learned to write poetry because he enjoyed it as well as when his brother asked him to do his
Filipino Poetry, an anthology of Filipino poetry in English. To do this, he had to go over the
hundreds of poems in the Old Filipiniana Division of the National Library that was located in
Intramuros, Manila. After going over those that were to be considered for his anthology, Dato
had written a poem called Among the Hills, which his brother considered as good enough to
be included in his anthology. Another reason why he wrote poetry was because he was inspired
by the works of others so much that he took his life experiences, especially those concerned
with love and crafted his art. He had several romantic relationships before settling with someone
who went with the moniker Pacita, a woman of remote Chinese descent who he eventually
separated with.

Although it is not explicitly known which woman inspired him, The Spouse is one of the
many products of his craft he made in his many times of falling in and falling out of love.

B. First Impressions
The literary material The Spouse is composed of 4 stanzas. It was quite short, but was
difficult to understand at first reading. It made use of symbols, imagery, and wordplay that were
really hard to recognize. In other words, the poem was deep and it demanded the full attention
and focus of the group. Some lines sound awkward and some words stick out more than the
others. The poem sounds strange as if we were reading it wrong.

In the first stanza, the setting of the woman and her husband was described. While
reading, we immediately noticed that there was an existing problem in the relationship of the
couple. The line Rose in her hand, and moist eyes young with weeping, gave us the hint that
the woman was experiencing something burdensome. We straightaway concluded that her
husband was being unruly to her.

The line in the first stanza She stands upon the threshold of her house, Fragrant with
scent that wakens love from sleeping implied that it was early in the morning when the narrative
started. The next line She looks far down to where her husband plows on the other hand,
implies that she was looking at a distance to her husband working in the fields. Because of this
implication, we believed that the man was a farmer, while the woman was a housewife.

The second stanza is where we noticed something different in the poem. The lines Her
hair disheveled in the night of passion, Her warm limbs humid with the sacred strife indicated
that something happened the night before. We were unsure at first, but after rereading the
poem, we came into the conclusion that the man and woman had sexual intercourse. This
hypothesis was further strengthened by the lines What may she know what man and woman
fashion, Out of the clay of wrath and sorrow, Life? We associated the word life in the last line of
the second stanza as a child resulting after engaging in the sexual activity. Thus, we relate the
clay of wrath as the man; and sorrow as the woman.

In the third stanza, we were already sure that the husband was being impolite and
offensive to her wife. The lines She holds no joy beyond the days tomorrow, She finds no
worlds beyond her arms embrace suggested that the woman was not happy in her
relationship. However, the lines She looks upon the Form behind the furrow, Who is her Mind,
her Motion, Time and Space infers that the woman sees her husband as her whole-being.
The 4th stanza of the poem was the most difficult to interpret. We had some trouble
analyzing the last stanza since it is where the unusual words were used. It confused the group
why the Sphinx was used as the subject and why it was smiling beside the river. We are
uncertain to what this line is referring to and what significance it holds in the dispute between
the man and her wife.

C. Poetic Structure/Form

The poem written by Luis Dato is a narrative poetry that has four stanzas, each
containing quatrains (four lines) and a meter of 11,10,11,10. The rhyming scheme of the poem is
ABAB CDCD EFEF AGAG.

D. Poetic Analysis
1. First Stanza

Rose in her hand, and moist eyes young with weeping,

In this line, the persona, the woman, is described to be crying after a night of passion
with his husband because she expects that she will be seeing her husbands face the moment
she opens her eyes, but instead she was clinging on a rose, a compromise, that made her feel
unsatisfied and alone.

She stands upon the threshold of her house,

Fragrant with scent that wakens love from sleeping,
As she gazes upon her husband on the entrance of her house, she still endures the pain
of what happened, wondering if she will get the love she wants as she believes she has no
other life but other than this.

She looks far down to where her husband plows.

In here, it can be interpreted that the husband is working and doing his job to sustain his
family.
In general, this stanza shows that there is already a problem that persists between the
woman and her husband. It is easily seen how the woman possesses the ownership of the
house when it is more appropriate to use their since they are described being husband and
wife, which implies that they can live together.

2.

Second Stanza

Her hair dishevelled in the night of passion,

Her warm limbs humid with the sacred strife
These lines specified that something happened the night before. In addition, the phrase
night of passion further strengthens the claim that the couple did have a sexual engagement.
The hair of the woman was described to be disheveled which means that it was loosely disarray

probably because of what happened that night. The line Her warm limbs humid with the sacred
strife on the other hand, implies that the sexual act was not romantic or intimate. Sacred here
means something that is special, important, worthy of respect, pure, and not a toy or something
to be taken lightly. However, the word sacred was linked to the word strife which connotatively
means struggle or conflict. The use of the word strife suggested that the woman was forced to
do the said act, and that she was in extreme discomfort while doing so. This suggested that the
man was not respecting the right and decision of the woman with regards to this kind of doings.

The full truth about sex is that: It is both sacred and polluted, holy and desecrated. The
sacredness of sex is not based on how we treat it or mistreat it. Its sacredness is based on its
essence, which comes from God. Sex is holy because God created it to be holy.

What may she know but man and woman fashion

Out of the clay of wrath and sorrowLife?
These lines support the idea that the man and her wife had sexual intercourse. The man
being described as the clay of wrath, while the woman being described as the sorrow.
Naturally, after engaging into a sexual act, the woman would be pregnant, thus implied by the
word life in the last line.

Also, the first postulate of our group, which was the notion that the woman was being
abused by her husband, was also confirmed in these lines. The designation of the word wrath
to the man means that he was really abusing her wife. Wrath is a very strong word which means
fierce antagonism or deep resentment. For the man to be associated with the word wrath, he
must have done something stern as a consequence of anger. On the other hand, the word
sorrow was designated to represent the woman. Sorrow is an expression of grief, sadness, or
disappointment. As a victim of such abuse, it is expected that the woman would display a state
of unhappiness and distress. In conclusion, the woman was dominated, controlled, and ruled
over by her husband, giving her no chance to express, defend, or even preserve her identity as
the wife.
3.

Third Stanza
She holds no joy beyond the days tomorrow
In the first line of the third stanza, the wife is depicted as someone who is unhappy for

what the future holds with her husband. It signifies that despite being fragrant with scent that

wakens love from sleeping, that manifests how she emits the picture of a wife who is well loved,
the woman is miserable with her marriage with the said spouse.

She finds no worlds beyond her arms embrace

She looks upon the Form behind the furrow
The next lines of the stanza clearly depicts that the man is dominant in their matrimonial
life. It demonstrates that the world that she moves in, whether it may be her actions and/or
words, are controlled and restricted by the Form behind the furrow which is her husband. The
line that says She finds no worlds beyond her arms embrace conveys how her marriage with
the spouse hinder her from broadening her perspective and limiting what she can and possibly
do with her life.

Who is her Mind, her Motion, Time and Space

The last verse of the stanza illustrates how the wife is fully consumed by her husband to
the point of revolving and resembling her thoughts, actions, time, and freedom based on the
spouse. This proves that the man is the one in charge of what and how the woman is and will be
in the days to come.

To summarize the whole stanza, it clearly depicts the domination and subservience of
the man and woman respectively. With a rhyming sequence of AGAG, the third person narrating
the story shows how miserable, manifested in the first two lines, and consumed, demonstrated
the last two lines, the wife is with her husband whom she called the Form of her mind, body,
time and space.

4.

Fourth Stanza

O somber mystery of eyes unspeaking,

And dark enigma of Life's love forlorn;
In this line we see that there is depiction that there is a feeling of dissatisfaction in the
side of the woman. It seems as if she is hankering for something more in her life but does not
act on this urge. The spouse accepts the life she is in and that it is a consequence of falling in
love with her husband. She is a mystery, a dark enigma in herself as she is unrevealing
because she hides her suffering from bleeding out.

The Sphinx besides the river smiles with seeking

The Sphinx is known to be full of things we do not know of and even after several
explorations and investigations, we still cannot fully uncover the story of the Sphinx. Just like
that, the spouse holds her own secrets that we cannot easily decipher. The Sphinx besides the
river smiles because she knows this secret is very difficult to crack. Even in the present, men
always say that women are such complex beings and that they do not get women logic.

The secret answer since the world was born.

This last line in relation to the previous one tells us the secret is only known by the
mysterious Sphinx (the woman) who smiles with seeking. Her feelings of oppression is what she
keeps inside, for she loves the man and is willing to make compromises, even if it means that
her life revolves around the husband.

This last stanza concludes the woman being accepting of the indirectly oppressed life
she has with the male spouse. You can see that she loves the man who she shares intimacy in
the night and plows the land in the day. She depicts the standard where women are just to stay
at home and appease the man she adores while the man carries on with his everyday work and
then gets home to his wife to finally finish fulfilling his duties and repeats the cycle. Although she
knows she is capable of doing so much more, she settles with this kind of life for the man where
she finds no worlds beyond her arms embrace, which is her husband.

E. Analysis as a Whole/Conclusion

To encapsulate the whole poem, the title itself, The Spouse, shows how the author, Luis
Dato, portray the character of the husband through the eyes of the wife. Having been introduced
to us with the perspective of what situation the woman is in currently, it shows how the poem
revolves around the husband like how the wife revolves her world around her spouse.
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