Woman as other/other as woman in Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's Magdalena: A discourse on difference

• Main Author: Ang, Lilibeth O.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2006
• Subjects: Cecilia Manguerra Brainard. Magdalena; Cecilia Manguerra Brainard > Criticism and interpretation; Women in literature
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/5084
• Institution: De La Salle University

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, in chronicling the life stories of three generations of Filipino women in her novel Magdalena, portrays her view of the identity of the Third World Filipino Woman. The study utilizes Trinth Minh-ha's theory of difference in exploring Brainard's representation of Third World Filipino woman as a category and discussing how she entangles and disentangles the identity and self-definition of Third World woman in the person of the Filipina. According to Trinth Minh-ha, the concept of `difference' can be understood as that which undermines the very idea of identity and defers to infinity the layers whose totality forms `I'. This is in opposition to the patriarchal notion of an essential, fixed identity or `self' dependent on the existence of its binary opposition, the `other' to give meaning to its position. In accomplishing the study's objectives, character analysis of the four main female characters, namely, Juana La Guapa, Luisa, Magdalena and Juana is employed to find out how they are individually and relationally represented as Third World Filipino women. The politics of the novel is further examined to determine whether these representations subject them to oppression or empower their position. Accordingly, the analysis reveals that while the representation of these women shows their gradual rejection of the fixed identity that subordinates them in their position as woman, native and other, Juana La Guapa and Magdalena ultimately become signifiers of oppressed women in their inability to completely break free from this repressive ideology. Juana's character, the only one who exhibits `difference' in her subversive act of writing her family's history and revealing their secrets, is barely touched upon and inadequately explored making Magdalena ultimately a novel about the oppression of Third World Filipino women in society.