Undressing Rizal’s Message: Clothing and Gender in Noli me tángere

• Main Author: Coo, Stephanie Marie R
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2020
• Subjects: Philippine Clothing; Spanish Colonialism; Clothing and Gender; Jose Rizal; Noli me tangere; Fashion Design; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/history-faculty-pubs/101; https://ajol.ateneo.edu/pshev/articles/441/5672
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

This article explores Jose Rizal's Noli me tangere as a site and source of rumination on clothing's historical significance in the Philippines in the late nineteenth century. The characters in the novel represented various social types; whose clothes contribute to our knowledge of nineteenth-century men's and women's clothing and to the role clothes played in colonial power relationships; status competition among natives; and gender politics. Clothes suggested a period of ferment when colonial divides were being blurred in part by intermarriages and upward social mobility. Through clothing; the novel also showed how female body parts were sexualized and subjected to the male gaze.