Maria Clara- Paragon or Caricature? Salvador P.

Lopez
There is no more significant inquiry that can be made into the literary work of
Jose Rizal than his conception of the character of Maria Clara. No other character in
Philippine literature has had a more pervasive influence on the thought-life of the
Filipino people than this famous heroine of Rizal.
Filipino womanhood is even now at the crossroads of modernity and
conservatism, slightly bewildered, and not knowing exactly which way to turn. Lure on
the one hand by the attractions of the new emancipation, she is on the other hand yet
too strongly attached to a lingering ideal of Filipino womanhood to brush aside the
traditional conception of her sex which she imbibed with her mother's milk.
For decades since Maria Clara was created by the genius of the great patriot, we
have heard the name of this heroine spoken now in reverent whispers, now in a gust
of romantic idealism. She has been celebrated in song and oratory as the paragon of
Filipino womanhood. Whenever it seemed that the modern Filipino girl was becoming
too vital, too progressive or too daring, prophets of execration and doom were not
lacking to hold up the figure of Maria Clara anew and to whisper her name as if it were
an incantation to drive away an evil spirit.
That was the accepted interpretation of the character of Maria Clara. Everyone
thought that Rizal intended to set her up as an ideal for the women of his country, the
noblest blossom of Filipino womanhood. Was she not the fiance of the hero of the
novel in which he tried to bare the soul of his people through the sufferings of his own
soul? Did not even this hero himself seem to be moulded upon Rizal's own personality,
the author weaving into this hero's thoughts, pains and tribulations, the deep notes of
his own anguish? Did he not imbue Maria Clara with loyalty and modesty, which are
the two cardinal virtues of our women?
There seemed to be no escape from the only conclusion to which the answers
logically led. It was evident, according to this view, the Rizal had intended Maria Clara
to be a model Filipino woman- loyal to the point of selflessness, modest to the point of
weakness.
So did the legend become firmly embedded in the Filipino mind- of Maria Clara
against whose assumed perfections all the weakness of present-day women are to be
measured, whose virtues are a mirror whereon other women might look at their own
reflection and blush in shame.
Let us try to be subject this legend to closer examination. We shall not tear away
the canvas from the wall of memory where Rizal hung it for the contemplation of
posterity. We shall only take it down with reverent hands so that at close range we

may judge whether the portrait was drawn by a loving or by a satirical hand.
Let us consider the original inspiration of Maria Clara. Rizal makes her the
daughter of a Spanish priest, thus placing a double handicap upon her as a would-be
Filipino woman. For that automatically makes her a mestiza and an illegitimate child.
It is true that he gives her the virtues of modesty and loyalty. But in an age which
compelled a woman to remain in the background, these qualities were not virtues
borne of interior strength. And while Rizal surrounds the figure of Maria Clara with the
aura of romanticism (as in her love scenes with Crisostomo Ibarra), he also places her
in questionable situations with another priest. All in all, the character of Maria Clara is
far too weak to justify her being held up as a model for the women of our country. Her
loyalty is the loyalty of the vanquished spirit, her modesty the modesty of the timid.
To insist that Rizal meant to put up a woman of this type as an ideal for future
generations of Filipino women to imitate, is to place a miserable estimate upon the
prophetic insight of Rizal. Surely, the man who wrote "The Philippines a Century Hence"
and 'The Indolence of the Filipino" could not have made the mistake of putting up as an
ideal a type of womanhood that the twentieth century was certain to outmode. Rizal
knew that the new century was going to be a century of unprecedented progress in all
lines of human endeavor. He knew that the new age would witness the emergence of a
new woman enjoying privileges and responsibilities of which before she was not even
aware. Having lived for many years in Europe and visited America shortly before the
turn of the century, he could not have missed the clear portents of the new
womanhood that was soon to arise.
It is difficult to believe that, with this background, Rizal could ever have fallen into
the error of setting up a feeble and invertebrate woman as the model for the women of
his country. He wanted his countrymen to be robust and powerful in spirit; he could
not have wished his countrywomen to become exactly the opposite. His famous letter
to the women of Malolos shows clearly that his conception of Filipino womanhood was
enlightened, and that while he deplored none of their old virtues, he insisted that new
and more vital qualities be added to these.
We are left with the surmise that Rizal most probably intended the character of
Maria Clara not as a glorification of the women of his time but rather as a satire upon
their foibles and weaknesses. To point out that her figure is touched with the sublimity
of the author's conception, is merely to say that Rizal succeeded as an artist in creating
a character that is fundamentally unsound without being contemptible, that is weak
and yet appealing.
The character of Maria Clara inspires not scorn but sympathy born of
understanding. We realize that Rizal probably intended to use the type of womanhood
she represented for a definite purpose, even as Cervantes used the character of Don
Quixote to laugh the romantic knight out of court forever.

Maria Clara was the forerunner in fiction of that woman who, in 1896, betrayed
the secret of the Katipunan to the priest of Tondo. You find in her the same feebleness,
the same helplessness, the same fear- none of the qualities that were possessed by
Princess Urduja of ancient Pangasinan or by Tandang Sora of the Revolution, or by
Teodora Alonso, Rizal's own brave and gallant mother.
Other times, other heroes and heroines. In the regime upon which this nation has
but recently entered, we shall need a type of Filipino woman as unlike that of Maria
Clara as possible- energetic, enterprising, progressive and with a mind of her own.