The Feminist Approach of Nick Joaquin’s TheSummer Solstice
I. Introduction
Most of the time, women are considered the soft ones of the family in the house. Women should Always be treated the same way as men is treated. According to the research of HuffPost UK, there are women facing more issues every day around the world. Feminism is believed that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. However, According to Kathy Caprino of woman Forbes, There are millions of people who both inwardly and outwardly do not support the idea that there should be equal rights and equal opportunities for men and women. The main focus of the story is about the power of women over men, that women can control men but not in a way that only superiority always governs. It still shows the unconditional love of a typical Husband and wife. The story portrays the women as the more superior gender than the men. How the men are dependent on the women and how the women control the men, rather than of the feminine gender should be treated as short-lived and has no real societal significance. The story opens the eyes of the readers that an individual cannot be disregarded only by his or her sexual orientation And that it should always be equal in every aspects of daily doings.
Feminism
Feminism, According to Rosser S.V. (2008) means very different things to different people. The many variants of feminism are associated with a variety of philosophical and political outlooks. Schiebinger, (1999) Found out that Many people in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere practice feminism without self-identifying as “feminists.” The vast majority of Europeans and Americans are feminists, at least liberal feminists—that is to say, they support equality and professional opportunities for women. It is important to recognize that what is labeled “feminist” in one time and place becomes business as usual in another. It is a curious phenomenon that when feminist practices or points of view become widely accepted in science, medicine, engineering, or the culture more generally, they are no longer considered “feminist,” but simply “just” or “true.” The result is that the term “feminist” continues to refer to people and policies on the radical cutting edge. According to Morris, P.T.(2015) The essence of feminism and women’s empowerment is our right to have and to determine choices, opportunities, resources and benefits. Empowerment is about our right to control our own lives and our ability to influence the direction of social change. Feminism is about creating a more just social and economic order locally, nationally and internationally. She also stated that Feminism is about more than a label, more than what some folks find politically correct or fashionable. A strong feminist movement has real, tangible effects. Feminism is the engine for substantive, positive change. Feminism is how we go from talking about women’s empowerment to seeing it realized.
This Study aims to discuss the Feministl Corroboration and constancies reflected in Nick Joaquin’s life and in his one of the Influential work The Summer Solstice. Particularly, it aims to answer the Question: What is the feminist approach of nick Joaquin’s story the summer solstice?
II. Literary Discussion
Background of The Author
Early life and Education
Nicomendes “nick” Joaquin was born in the old district of Pacò in Manila, Philippines, on May 4 1917, the feast day of Saint Nicomedes, a protomartyr of Rome, after whom he took his baptismal name. His father is a colonel in the war against the Spanish, his mother was a school teacher. There were ten children in the family, eight boys and two girls, with Nick as the fifth child.
Considered as a brilliant kid, he did not get to finish high school, he discovered that he could study more by reading books on his own, and his father’s library had countless of the books he mind to read. He wrote so variedly and so well about so many phase of the Filipino throughout his entire life span. After his father’s death he lived with his sister-in-law Sarah. He had attended Pacò Elementary School and had three years of secondary education in Mapa High School but was too intellectually restless to be confined in a classroom. Among other changes, he was unable to pursue the religious vocation that his strictly Catholic family had envisioned to be his future. Joaquín himself confessed that he always had the vocation for the religious life and would have entered a seminary if it were not for his father’s death. After the Japanese ended their ocuupation in the Philippines, he was a stage manager for Sarah’s acting troupe. He then decided to become a writer.
Writing career
Joaquin was awarded a scholarship to the Dominican monastery in Hong Kong after publication of his essay “La Naval de Manila” (1943), a description of Manila’s fabled resistance to 17th-century Dutch invaders. The Dominicans offered him a two-year scholarship to the Albert College in Hong Kong, and he accepted. Unable to follow the rigid rules imposed upon those studying for the priesthood, however, he left the seminary in 1950. He was well known as a historian of the brief Golden Age of Spain in the Philippines, as a writer of short stories suffused with folk Roman Catholicism, as a playwright, and as a novelist. Nick Joaquin also improved the English language with critics coining “Joaquinesque” to describe his baroque Spanish-flavored English based on Filipinism. Nick Joaquin died in April 29, 2004.
Story Summary
Dona Lupeng a married woman who desires to be adored by his husband. They are a wealthy family, they have a carriage driver named Entoy and a maid named Amada. Dona Lupeng saw Amada on Entoy’s room acting crazy. Amada was forbidden to attend the festival known Tadtarin, a three days festival that women celebrate the ritual of fertility. While the family is enjoying St. John festival Dona Lupeng didn’t noticed Paeng’s cousin Guido in the crowd. Paeng’s young cousin Guido returns back to the Philippines after studying from Europe. Dona Lupeng and Guido are talking about the festival, after Guido giving suggestive comments to Dona Lupeng, she disagrees with Guido, as she is about to leave Guido grab her foot and kissed her toes. Dona Lupeng look at him with disgust. Inside the carriage Dona Lupeng and her husband Don Paeng are talking about how Guido annoyed Dona Lupeng, she disagrees with his husband about Guido’s actions towards her, while they are talking Dona Lupeng found herself intrigued by the attention of Guido; as she realise that he was correct in saying that women should be enrapture and men should adore them. While Dona Lupeng is in the sofa Don Paeng talks to her, Dona Lupeng who never experienced going to the Tadtarin ask his husband if she can go, after arguing Don Paeng allowed her and accompany her. Dona Lupeng ignored his husband as she watched the festival. Once the dancing begun Don Paeng tries to claim his wife, but she runs from him to the women. As Paeng tries to take her back the women in the crowds beat him out, leaving him powerless. As the two return home, Paeng says he must whip his wife because he loves her and feels that she needs to be put in her place. To this, Dona Lupeng and Don Paeng are arguing, Dona Lupeng doesn’t want to be respected but wants to be adored. In the end Dona Lupeng won and Don Paeng adores her wife, Dona Lupeng orders him to kiss her feet
312901844069000-2374904413252
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136622144139900III. Conceptual Framework
3790950234315THE SUMMER SOLSTICE
0THE SUMMER SOLSTICE
2009775234315FEMINISM
0FEMINISM
150607234315RELIGION
CULTURE
0RELIGION
CULTURE
Approach Applied on to Selection
“I know, but better to be dirty than to be boiled alive. And what ails your wife, eh? Have you been beating her again?”
“Oh no, señora: I have not touched her.” “Then why is she screaming? Is she ill?”
“I do not think so. But how do I know? You can go and see for yourself, señora. She is up there.”
When Doña Lupeng entered the room, the big half-naked woman sprawled across the bamboo bed stopped screaming. Doña Lupeng was shocked.
——
It is true, señora. The spirit is in her. She is the Tadtarin. She must do as she pleases. Otherwise, the grain would not grow, the trees would bear no fruit, the rivers would give no fish, and the animals would die.”
“Naku, I did no know your wife was so powerful, Entoy.”
“At such times she is not my wife: she is the wife of the river, she is the wife of the crocodile, she is the wife of the moWomen had built it up: this poise of the male. Ah, and women could destroy it, too! She recalled, vindictively, this morning’s scene at the stables: Amada naked and screaming in bed whiled from the doorway her lord and master looked on in meek silence. And was it not the mystery of a woman in her flowers that had restored the tongue of that old Hebrew prophet?
—
IV. THEMATIC DISCUSSION
According to bright hub education the themes in the summer solstice are St. John’s and Tatarin Festivals – The St. John’s festival is about men and their fertility, which seems quite vulgar to Lupeng and makes her start to realize how she wishes women could be seen in the same way. The Tatarin festival is the exact opposite, showing women as leaders of fertility since they carry children. This festival is the last trigger to make Lupeng feel as though she is stronger than a man and deserves adoration.The theme is predominant because it definitely calls attention to the empowerment of the woman over the man and also the dominance of the women on that period.
The Summer Solstice main theme shows the unequal treatment between man and woman. Man is the superior than woman, as what the middle of the story tried to emphasize.
The reflection and biographical study in this short story is empowering women as we see them in the same way like men do. It shows that women rather than to be respected they want also to be adored by men. The study proposed the main theme in this story.
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