A new historicist reading of Ninotchka Rosca's Twice Blessed

• Main Author: Manlansing, Maria Camilla G.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1993
• Subjects: Rosca; Ninotchka Twice Blessed; Twice Blessed (Novel); Historicism; Women novelists
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/1214
• Institution: De La Salle University

This thesis is a New Historicist reading of Ninotchka Rosca's Twice Blessed using the theory of Stephen Greenblatt. In doing a New Historicist reading of Twice Blessed, the writer attempts to bring out the diversity of the different socio-cultural classes and the power relations found in the areas of class and gender. The focus of the study is more on the dominant-latent relationship in the said areas which is caused by the ideology of the different classes and genders. But in order to avoid falling back on the symptomatic reading which has a similar focus, the writer includes the study of subversion found in the text and how this subversion is contained. This analysis made use of the characters: Hector Basbas, Katerina Gloriosa and Blackie Dominguez to illustrate the dynamism of the different social classes. These three characters exemplified how the dominant class receded and became the residual class how the emergent class gained power and became the dominant class and how a new emergent class is formed. This study also analyzes the male and female gender relationship, locating the subversion embodied in the character of Teresa Tikloptuhod and how this subversion is contained. The writer recommends the use of the Marxist-Feminist reading as another possible method of studying Rosca's Twice Blessed. Aside from being socio-political in nature, the novel is full of insinuations that show women as the latent gender so that the use of Feminism combined with Marxism could help in its further analysis.