The Woman Who Had Two Navels

By Nick Joaquin

The Woman Who Had Two Navels is a 1961 historical novel by Nick Joaquin, a National
Artist for Literature and leading English-language writer from the Philippines. He is known for
his short stories and novels in the English language. The Woman Who had Two Navels is
considered a classic in Philippine Literature. It was the recipient of the first Harry Stonehill
award. It tells the story of a Filipino elite woman who is Hallucinating and preoccupied with the
notion that she has two navels or belly buttons in order to be treated as an extraordinary person.

The author’s choice of words is quiet impressive. The words are very fancy that it catches
the reader’s attention. It has long and complex words with many modifiers. The novel is full of
flowery words and appears lively and vivid. Nick Joaquin uses some non-standard English like
the French word “rampart” and “buccaneer”. His choice of words contributes to the message of
the story by the use of imagery that helps the readers to conceive the meaning of the message.

The novel was in a third person point of view wherein Nick Joaquin narrates the story of
the woman who claims to have two navels. The narrator as well is an omniscient type of narrator
for the reason the he has full access of all the character’s thoughts and experiences. It consists
with a monologue which serves a specific purpose in storytelling that provides the audience more
details about a character or about the plot. The author’s tone drifted from being delusional and
betrayed into courageous. Nick Joaquin is consistently good in doing this novel.

The novel has both long and short punchy sentences. It contains subordinating clauses
and the word-order is straight forward. The author uses figurative languages such as simile and
metaphors which are mostly used e.g. “…waterfront’s belt of buildings looked like a cake with
alley cutting …” which drown the audience to the author’s imagination. You can observe as well
a stylistic device and expressive means in his work like “pain in the air” which express the
characters emotion. The literary work was constructed with flashbacks like when Connie was 5
years old, how Concha first met her husband and near the end, in the final chapter when Dr.
Monson was once a young fighter in a decisive battle in Tirad Pass. The novel is not in
chronological order since it consists of flashbacks that interrupt the chronological order of a
story. It uses stylistic features of affixation, ambiguity and idioms. While the paragraph structure
of the novel is short and flush left.

All of the elements that are mentioned above helps create the meaning of the passage. By
the use of figurative language and imagery the audience was giving contextual hints that will
allow them to understand the meaning and with the stylistic devices and expressive means as I
have noted help express the emotion of the characters blisteringly. The novel is perfectly dress-
up making it eye catching to the audience. The author’s style is brilliant and has masterful
control of the language which leads no doubts that it won a Harry Stonehill award.