21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World

Raymundo, Reynell Joseph P. August 5, 2019

12- STEM A Ptolemy Ms. Jomelyn

Lao

Servant Girl by Estrella D. Falcon

An individual who works from dawn until dusk. An individual who once believe
that love can endure everything, that her ideology of love may also take place in reality
that it doesn’t only lie between fantasy literary works, and that love can help her escape
from the path she was destined to walk on. An individual who once live in a dream, but
eventually awakened that what she saw were far from where she really is, a
nightmare. An individual who has experienced the atrocity of life. An individual who
chose to stay in her position because she has nowhere to go. Is she really the one to be
blamed? Was it her fault how her story ended? Is life really a matter of choice? Or we
just live the way the world has set?

This is an account of a modest gorgeous house helper named Rosa and her
grown-up fascination. Rosa is depicted as a physically and verbally maltreated young
servant lady to an unpleasant but at times good mistress. Her mistress gives so much
importance to money that she gets violent and loses control when she loses something.
Rosa fantasized about the cochero whom she named to be "Angel" who later-on
referred to be as Pedro. She envisioned him as not the same as other men, increasingly
heroic, gentler, and her rescuer from her hopeless existence with the woman she’s been
working for a very long time. What she can perceive with Angel is hope and a clear
manifestation of her desire to get away from the chains that caused her pain. Her
admirer Sancho then again, was harsh and discourteous towards her and brutally hurt
her. She kept running from her special lady house and Sancho’s boorish arms. She
yearned to discover her "Angel". But the man she considered as her knight in shining
armor does not by any means exist. Angel is just a piece of her imagination that she
brought to life from her dreams. At last, Rosa just acknowledges her destiny as a
hopeless worker. Rather, the man she accepted to be her hero, was the person
who had restored her back to her heart rending life.

How the society views and perceives the value of a house helper is someone
who does the chores that some of us consider as a difficult act, deeds that are beyond
their capabilities but actually just a simple act. They are someone who has chosen to
serve because that is the only way they know for them to survive. These people are
individuals who do noble work despite the inhumanity that they are experiencing.
Rosa was a reflection of what servants are typically undergoing under the headship of
their mistresses. Did she portray a sign of weakness? Weakness is characterized by
one’s incapability, ailing in integrity and making the wrong decision regardless of the
knowledge of what is right, what must be done. Can we blame Rosa? Does she have
any other option? Or she has no choice but to pursue the path that she has lived? Did
Rosa show an act of weakness when she made images in her mind, when she
fantasized about having someone to save her? Rosa was one of those courageous
women. We all have our own battle, we only differ in our way of dealing it. No one has
the right to tell one that his/her method of overcoming his/her battle is more courageous
or less valiant than others because we don’t have an idea how much tears fell from her
eyes, how many bruises did she attain and how many hurtful words she tried to ignore.
This story was able to exhibit how Rosa viewed her situation as a hopeless one that she
formed fantasies from her thoughts to fulfill the sense of happiness, the only way she
knew for her to run away from all the hardships that she was encountering from the time
she open her eyes in the morning until the sun loses its light in the evening. Having a
brief view, it can still be considered that her mistress showed an act of weakness. There
are instances in the story when she felt sudden guilt after she realized that what she
had done to Rosa isn’t right.

“Her anger mounting with every angry word she said, she finally swung out an
arm, and before she quite knew what she was doing, she slapped Rosa’s face. She was
sorry as soon as she realized what she had done. She turned away, muttering still,
while Rosa’s eyes filled with sudden tears”.
 It may happen that her mistress is by any means demonstrated a depiction of
superior complexity, that what she is showing is really far from what she really is, what
she truly feels. It might be the role that she’s portraying, that she must be the one in
authority, the strong one that is pushing her to pretend. Her character shows a strong
personality but behind it hides a sympathetic heart.

Love conquers all. A statement that made every individual believe about what
love is really capable of, what change it can cause to our lives. Love indeed is a feeling
that everyone wishes to feel and experience. It is the mystery behind this word that
keeps us from holding on to our own beliefs, and concepts of romantic affection. We all
have our fantasies. Fantasies that are formed in our minds from events opposite to what
had happened in the past, we are experiencing in the present, and we aspire to meet in
the future. Dreams are the passageway away from reality. When everything messes up,
we try to look for a way to be free from what's keeping us unhappy. A world where we
can be in charge of, a place where our aspirations can happen, where there is nothing
that can cause our eyes to shed tears. Due to the happenings in Rosa's life journey, she
assumed about the act that Pedro did. An accident happened, and she got herself hurt,
but nobody tried to help her to get up. No one but Angel. From gratitude, her feeling of
affection blossomed. She once believed that the person she named as her Angel will
break the chains that bind her from living life that way she wanted to. Angel gave her
hope and strengthened her desire to live, to be free. After they have met, how she view
life changed. She learned to smile more often, learned to see the happiness brought by
being alive, and she learned to live happily even just for a short span of time. There is
some sort of hope that events in her life will get better, and she held on to that vision.

“She found time to come out on the street for a while, every day. Sometimes she
would sweep the yard or trim the scraggly hedge of viola bushes; or she would loiter on
an errand for tomatoes or vinegar. She said to herself, He dreams of me too, and he
thinks of me. He passes here every day wishing to see me. She never saw him pass,
but she said to herself, He passes just when I am in the house, that’s why I never see
him”.
 She deals with her own battle every time she wakes up, the abuse and the
disrespectful words that she experiences every single day, but somehow Angel make
her believe about love. He gave her a reason to smile despite the burden that she has
carried for a long period. But at the end her dream failed her. It came out that Pedro
hardly remembered her, that the beginning of her fantasies about her knight and shining
armor is just a simple act of kindness, no sign of affection. She was blinded by her
emotion. Everything has an end and so, her fascination. She let herself got drowned
from her own concept of love. It seemed like she depend a lot from the guy because
she felt like she was all alone in her battle but no one can blame her. She was
eventually awakened that her life is far from the images that she believed to be true,
that it is really tough to escape from her nightmare. Her ideology of love failed her.

Women have been treated and labeled as inferior to men. Being in a patriarchal
nation, where men are predominating numerous roles, hold power and authority, it is
indeed an implication of women being discriminated by the society. The role played by
Sancho was a representation of how wicked men sees women. The characters of the
two men are extremely distinct from one another showing the comparison of men in the
present times. It’s either you meet someone who will treat you as a person or someone
who will look at you as a mere object. A conflict rose between him and Rosa when the
servant lady refused to what Sancho wanted to happen especially when she caught
Sancho looking at the neck of the dress she wore at that time. Women have been
viewed as individuals to fulfill the sexual pleasure of men, a statement where I strongly
disagree. They are never an instrument for anyone’s satisfaction. Women are capable
of doing what most men do, they were able to break the gender stereotypes set by
the society, and they are way better than how the society perceives them. Looking at a
different view, the society sees women as inferior not, only to men but also to women
with positions. A woman can also be a superior to the weak, to those who can’t speak
for themselves, to those who can’t defend themselves and to those who have been
deprived of their right to be humans. The mistress shows an act of unjust treatment to
Rosa. The character of Rosa is a household helper who experienced being maltreated
by her mistress. Every time she does an act that isn’t right for her mistress’ standards, it
is expected that beating, a slap will be the exchange. It seems like she got used to it
already that it reached the point that her response to the pain caused by her mistress’
abuse and hurtful words that remind her of how low her social status is “Nothing’s the
matter with me”.

Despite all the unjust control that she’s been experiencing with her mistress, she
can’t run from her situation because she has no one, no one to seek for help, nowhere
to go to. All she has is herself and her fascinations that kept her alive from her cruel
state. It was stated in the story that she managed to accept somehow her condition
because her memories of the past families that she worked with was even worse
and there are moments with her current mistress that she considered as lucky ones.

“She had stayed with this last mistress because in spite of her spells of bad
humor, there were periods afterward when she would be generous with money for a
dress, or for a cine with other maids. And they had been alone, the two of them.”

The primary reason behind everything that happened to her was because of the
position she’s playing in the society. Does she even have any money? Is it enough for
her to go away and look for another job? Will it be sustainable for her to live? If it is,
then why did she stay? Poverty played a big role in delivering the message of this story.
It is her social status that made it more difficult for her to escape from her nightmare. An
instance in the story explained what money can do and somehow put fuel in Rosa’s
intend to be in the shoes of her mistress.

“The girl poured the water from the can into the earthen jar, a bitter lump in her
throat, and thought of what she would do to people like her mistress when she herself,
God willing, would be “rich.”

In defiance of her mistress’ treatment she still managed to care for its welfare. It
is evident in the latter part of the story that she helped her mistress to get up from the
table where she fell asleep after getting drunk and brought it in its bedroom. It discloses
to us the miserable truth of a portion of the individuals working under other people who
have a higher societal class than them. The maltreatment that one encounters is
brought about by the unrivaled thinking of the persons they are working for.
 Life isn’t fair. It is never, never was and will never be fair. Some of us are
suffering out of hunger, illness but most of us are dying due to others’ unjust treatment
and judgment. If there is one thing that I would like to negate is how this story ended.
Individuals should never rely on how life wanted them to live. We are responsible for our
destiny and we make our own destiny. But I am not saying that how Rosa fought in this
battle wasn’t something that individuals should look up to because she will always be a
lady with the character of strength and courage. What everyone must discern and be
fully aware of is that house helpers are individuals also so, it is morally right to treat
them not as servants, but as persons. If you are just going to
deeper your understanding, you’ll be struck of the fact that Rosa is better than us
regardless of where she came from or her societal status. Imagine yourself in her
shoes, will you be able to endure the obstacles with a good character? She is just
someone who truly possesses a heart of gold. It’s just that her faith didn’t favor her. Just
like each one of us, they deserve to be treated as humans for they also have their
rights, rights that some of us forgot to value at times. Yes, they are getting paid in
exchange for their service and hard work but is anyone buying their entire identity, their
personality and their attributes? No, so don’t behave as if you own them, as if you
bought them from a store and once you got them you can already do whatever you like
to them. They’re not toys and above all they’re not animals for you to imprison them and
deprived them of what they truly need. Treat others the way you wanted to be known for
and treated not simply because it is what’s morally right but because you respect them
for who they are.

Word Count : 2473