HYSTERICAL FEMININITY IN NICK JOAQUIN’S THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS
(1) University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines
(*) Corresponding Author
Abstract
In this essay, I read Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels through the lens of feminist scholarship on the history and social construction of female hysteria. I argue that a critical intertextual reading of this sort affirms the heteropatriarchal foundations of popular ideations of the Philippine nation. I use Sara Mills’ Feminist Stylistics to draw attention to Joaquin’s discourse on women, specifically, hysterical women such as Connie Escobar. I argue that the discourse of the novel—its reliance on the stereotype of the hysterical feminine woman, its focalization through a male gaze, and its employment of the schemata of “women asking for it”—explains why readers find Connie Escobar’s inconsistent behavior and characterization not only plausible, but even subversive. However, reading the novel from the lens of feminist stylistics also reveals instances where the novel reinscribes patriarchal ideology. Any reading that views Connie as a metaphor for the Philippine nation must therefore confront the patriarchal ideology that informs this vision of the nation.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Arong, M. R. (2019). A Native Clearing: The English Language in Anglophone Filipino Novels. Postcolonial Studies, 22(4), 490-505. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2019.1690761
Arong, M. R. (2018). Temporality in Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels. Kritika Kultura, 30(31), 455-473. https://doi.org/10.13185/KK2018.
03034
Blanco, J. (2022). The allegory of the Billiken in Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels: Capitalism as Religion in the Philippines Under US Rule (1902-1946). UNITAS. https://doi.org/10.31944/2022950201
Bogousslavsky, J. (2020). The mysteries of hysteria: a historical perspective. International Review of Psychiatry, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540261.2020.1772731
Bonomi, C. (2023). A Brief Apocalyptic History of Psychoanalysis: Erasing Trauma. New York, NY: Routledge.
Braun, J. (2020). Introduction. In J. Braun (Ed.), Performing Hysteria: Images and Imaginations of Hysteria (pp. 11-26). Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18dvt2d.4
Bukunmi, O. R., Owoeye, S. T., & Abioye, T. (2021). Countering gender inequality: The use of free indirect discourse in Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Children of the Eagle. African Journal of Reproductive Health, 25(5)s, 98-106. https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajrh/article/view/221406
Chang, J. (2003). Masquerade, hysteria, and neocolonial femininity in Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters. Contemporary Literature, 44(4), 637-663. http://cl.uwpress.org/content/44/4/637.full.pdf
Devereux, C. (2014). Hysteria, feminism, and gender revisited: The case of the second wave. ESC: English Studies in Canada, 40(1), 19-45. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/562915
Ezenewa-Ohaeto, N. and Ikemelu, A. (2021). Women’s Sexist Language as a Tool of Patriarchy: A Re-reading of Nwapa's “Efuru”. Awka Journal of English Language and Literary Studies, 8(1), 122-134. https://nigerianjournalsonline.com/index.php/AJELLS/article/view/2003
Fermin, J. C. (2021). What emerges from a “ruined world”: The dueling Philippine humanisms of Nick Joaquin. Alon: Journal for Filipinx American and Diasporic Studies, 1(2), 181-204. https://doi.org/10.5070/LN41250971
Gilman, S. L. (2022) The Image of the Hysteric. In Hysteria Beyond Freud (pp. 345-454). Berkeley, California: University of California Press.
Gilman, S. L. (2020). Wandering Imaginations of Race and Hysteria: The Origins of the Hysterical Body in Psychoanalysis. In J. Braun (Ed.), Performing Hysteria: Images and Imaginations of Hysteria (pp. 41-60). Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18dvt2d.6
Gonzalez, G. (2019). Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels: Historical Transformations Bereft of Social Transformation. Unitas, 91(2), 148-168. http://unitasust.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/UNITAS-91-2-November-2018-Issue-1.pdf
Grosz, E. (1989). Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Sydney: Allen and Unwind.
Joaquin, N. (2018). The Woman Who Had Two Navels. Pasig, Philippines: Anvil Publishing. First published, 1961.
Jones, A. R. (1985). Inscribing femininity: French theories of the feminine. In G. Greene & C. Kahn (Eds.), Making a difference: Feminist literary criticism (pp. 80-112). London, UK: Methuen.
Kayani, A., & Anwar, B. (2022). Transitivity choices and gender representation: A feminist stylistic analysis of Ali’s “The Book of Saladin”. Journal of Arts & Social Sciences (JASS), 9(1), 14-28. https://doi.org/10.46662/jass.v9i1.208
King, H. (2022). Once Upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates. In Hysteria Beyond Freud (pp. 3-90). Berkeley, California: Univ. of California Press.
Krasny, E. (2020). Hysteria Activism: Feminist Collectives for the Twenty-First Century. In J. Braun (Ed.), Performing Hysteria: Images and Imaginations of Hysteria (pp. 125-146). Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18dvt2d.10
Liang, I. (2022). The Middle Place: Mediation and Heterotopia in Nick Joaquín’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels. In Y. Fang & R. T. Tally Jr. (Eds.), Spatial Literary Studies in China (pp. 241-256). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-03914-0_14
Lizada, M. (2018). When She Started Acting Queer: A Queer Gothic Reading of Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels. Kritika Kultura, 30, 438-454. https://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/kk/article/view/KK2018.030
33
Micale, M. S. (1989). Hysteria and its historiography: A review of past and present writings (II). History of Science, 27(4), 319-351. https://doi.org/10.1177/007327538902700401
Mills, S. (2005). Feminist stylistics. Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge.
Nadal, P. (2021). Cold War Remittance Economy: US Creative Writing and the importation of New Criticism into the Philippines. American Quarterly, 73(3), 557-595. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2021.0036
Reinier, J. (2020). Reclaiming Space: Feminist Hysteria in Cixous and Clément, Gilman, and Ferrante. The Johns Hopkins University Macksey Journal, 1, 1-15. https://www.mackseyjournal.org/publications/vol1/iss1/89
San Juan, Jr., E. (2018). Subversions of desire: Prolegomena to Nick Joaquin. Manila, Philippines: UST Publishing House. http://unitasust.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/UNITAS-88-2-San-Juan-SOD-Online-Book-1.pdf
Showalter, E. (2020). Histories Revisited: Hysterical Epidemics and Social Media. In J. Braun (Ed.), Performing Hysteria: Images and Imaginations of Hysteria (pp. 27-40). Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18dvt2d.5
Showalter, E. (2022). Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender. In Hysteria Beyond Freud (pp. 286-344). Berkeley, California: Univ. of California Press.
Smith-Rosenberg, C. (1972). The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Conflict in 19th-Century America. Social Research, 39(4), Winter, 652-678. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40970115
Topacio, K. N. (2020). Representing the modern Filipino housewife: Presuppositions in Good Housekeeping Magazine Philippines. Asian Women, 36(3), 49-70. https://doi.org/10.14431/aw.2020.9.36.3.49
Vachhani, S. J. (2019). Rethinking the politics of writing differently through écriture féminine. Management Learning, 50(1), 11-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507618800718
Valoojerdi, M. H. A. (2021). Postcolonial Gothic elements in Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels. IAFOR Journal of Literature & Librarianship, 10(2), 22-33. https://doi.org/10.22492/ijl.10.2.01
Zechner, D. (2020). The Phantom Erection: Freud’s Dora and Hysteria’s Unreadabilities. In J. Braun (Ed.), Performing Hysteria: Images and Imaginations of Hysteria (pp. 87-104). Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18dvt2d.8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v8i1.5753
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2024 Christine Veloso Lao
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Indexed and abstracted in:
IJHS Sinta 3 Certificate (S3 = Level 3)
International Journal of Humanity Studies (IJHS) has been nationally accredited Sinta 3 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia based on the decree No. Surat Keputusan 158/E/KPT/2021. Validity for 5 years: Vol 4 No 1, 2020 till Vol 8 No 2, 2024
This work is licensed under CC BY-SA.
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
p-ISSN: 2597-470X (since 31 August 2017); e-ISSN: 2597-4718 (since 31 August 2017)
Notice: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the editorial team or publishers.
International Journal of Humanity Studies (IJHS) is a scientific journal in English published twice a year, namely in September and March, by Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.