Ars et Natura

Vision of a traditional Filipina                          Rizal nowhere announced that he was going to depict an “ideal woman” or an “ideal Filipino woman”—whatever that may be. Being a true novelist, he set out to create just one particular person, a single definite individual—and he succeeded so well that his heroine has become a folk-figure, the only one of all his characters who has attained this highest form of literary immortality. Between the first and second parts of Don Quixote , the folk took over and recreated its hero; when Cervantes wrote the second part he was already dealing with another, larger hero, a folk-figure, only partly his creation. Similarly, the folk took over and recreated Maria Clara: unfortunately, there had been, in the meantime, a sudden shifting of cultures: Maria Clara was recreated as a Victorian—which she never was, nor any of her contemporaries for that matter.    ...