Lady’s Choice
(Kerima Polotan Tuvera’s The Virgin: A Feminist Approach)
Kerima Polotan Tuvera is a Filipino female author who wrote The Virgin which won two first awards in the Philippines. The story can be narrated both man and woman.
The text shows that the character, a woman who likes to wear flurry-colored clothes, Miss Mijares—a 34 year-old submissive daughter, sacrificing herself (she spent most of her life caring for her ill mother that’s why she’s still a virgin). She is a spinster who has strength in her work at the office, in her assurance and being discreet, that shows her sexual pleasure. She wants to be loved and to get married. She reflects a woman who has the right to express sexual inclination but not to the tone of exploitation. Miss Mijares is the protagonist of the story. One of the feministic qualities of the character is freedom. Miss Mijares possesses the power of choice from choosing to accept her sexuality towards another. She emphasizes the importance of choice. From a simple choice of expression ("you will wait for me") reflects the power of choice: as God’s favor. She proves that even you are a woman; you can still manage your own life under the patriarchal society. The character shows a silent impetus, a resolution that need not proclaim. Even in the confines of her mind she presents a spirit that is woman. She also states in the story that women are the masters of their own destiny. That at the end of the day they hold their lives. The male character, the carpenter who applied in the agency where Miss Mijares worked, is the one who fulfill her desire. Miss Mijares allows herself to be redounding by her perceptible for the carpenter and rebut to his urge. Though all women surely set a defiite quantity of feminine inscrutability I still feel short on what could’ve been an inspirational amount of girl power.