Jose Rizal and Maria Clara

a reading of Noli Me tangere and El Filibusterismo Characters

Satire writing
Rizal deconstructs the Filipino Identity by assigning different
aspects of the ideal Filipino in the different characters in his
novels.

He creates caricature characters that takes one personality and

exaggerates them.
Maria Clara
Maria’s features were equaled to that of jewels, “the young
woman raised her eyes to the sky; they were limpid, like
sapphires” (pp 398). Rizal went as far as to give a
description of Maria’s hair during the party “Her long black
hair was pulled into a ribbon” (pp 191). These descriptions
situate Maria as an object, a pretty doll with no individual
thoughts and only appears when summoned. She is so
exaggerated that her only flaw is her actual blood line,
outside of that, she is literally the perfect native Filipina.
 Leonora Rivera

Sa Asotea
Leonardo Tayao Cruz
Maria Clara
However, she had broken out of this mold the second Ibarra
enters the scene when she says “I don’t want the peace you
are offering. Peace I will give myself” (pp 196). While her
fathers doted on her as if she was a frail object, she was her
own person when she was with Crisostomo. She openly
gives her opinions to Crisostomo when she usually stays
quiet in front of her (legal) father, Capital Tiago. Crisostomo
Ibarra’s supposed death was the death of two things for
Maria: her individuality and her future.
 Sisa
She is characterized as a martyr figure
“with a weak character and more heart
than brains, she knew only how to love
and cry” (pp 91).

The chapter where she goes insane, titled

“A Mother’s Tale”, tells us that Sisa is not
one of the mothers who suffered under the
colonial rule but rather, she is all of them.
 Sisa
A warm and obedient wife for a cold
and uncaring man. This is seen with the
lines “To her, her husband was her
god” (pp 91), and “Sisa said nothing,
even if I seemed he was eating her
instead.”

Publicly shamed, and with no one else

to turn for support, the only way to free
herself from the societal barriers that
stifled her (ie. demure perfect wife
role, unable to speak out) was to go
insane.
 Juli
an obedient child and loyal lover to Basilio, Juli
seems to be always unlucky. Worked as a maid to
pay for her father’s (Kabesang Tales) freedom.

It may be viewed that her suicide was the only

action that was truly made by her and her only

Juli, knowing that she basically had no control of her

life, would rather chose to die than to continue to
suffer the consequences of failing to keep up with
her roles
Donya Consolacion
European-wanna-be who is bent on distancing
herself from her “indio-ness”

pretends not to know Tagalog and speaks very bad

Spanish

Rizal’s uses: “lady”, “lady of the house” (pp 255),

“queen” (pp 254), “Muse” (pp 257) and “mistress”
(pp 261) to refer to her.

Rizal characterizes her as ugly and the phrase “never

looked in the mirror” to describe her
Donya Victorina
“social climber”

a woman who easily abandons her true identity for

one that will get her to a higher place in life (Sonido
2011)

she was conditioned to think that the Spanish men

were better than the Filipino men. She becomes a
satire of the colonial system that favored the
incompetent white man/ lighter skinned man rather
than the competent native.
 The “pretty” ones (Maria, Juli, Sisa) died or went
insane while the “ugly” ones (Donya Consolacion
and Donya Victorina) managed to triumph
 Song of Maria Clara
Sweet are the hours in one’s own Native Land,
All there is friendly o’er which sun shines above;
Vivifying is the breeze that wafts over her fields;
Even death is gratifying and more tender is love.

Ardent kissed on a mother’s lips are at play,

On her lap, upon the infant child’s awakening,
The extended arms do seek her neck to entwine,
And the eyes at each other’s glimpse are smiling.
It is sweet to die in one’s own Native Land,
All there is friendly o’er which the sun shines above;
and deathly is the breeze for one without
A country, without a mother and without love
 Ladies Man
Trinidad Rizal was 19 years old when her brother, Jose Rizal was executed. Rizal
often wrote to and about Trinidad. In one letter, he writes:

“It is a pity that in our country the principal adornments of women consists almost of
ways of beautiful dresses and luxury, not education. In the provinces our women still
preserve a virtue which compensates for the little learning that they have and that is
industriousness, and delicacy of heart or refinement of sentiment...

while you are still young and there is yet time to educate yourself, it is necessary that
you cultivate the habit of reading, and reading with concentration...”
 Ladies Man
Trinidad remembers one incident when Rizal played a trick on a group of town
beauties in Laguna whom he wanted to get rid of since it was already getting late at
night.

He jumped on top of a table and announced he would perform an extraordinary trick.

He said “Stay seated and don’t come any closer. If you do, you’ll spoil the show”

He counted one... two... three... and jumped from the table and ran away from the
women.