...The Virgin by Kerima Polotan The title of Kerima Polotan's "The Virgin" gives us the subject-virginity, female virginity, a cherished value of Filipino Male culture. By presenting its protagonist as "victim" rather than heroine of this value system, the text subverts it. Reflecting on her virginal state, Miss Mijares does so "with a mixture of shame and bitterness and guilt" The story's eroticism is heightened by the lyrical, almost cadenced language. (The eroticism is quite explicit for it's time, and the foregrounding of a woman's sexulity is also rather in advance of its time.) But the use of symbolism is a bit too obvious--the paperweight, the dream of being lost, the jeepney's detour, the storm. Miss Mijares is a dutiful daughter, sacrificing herself, in this case, for a sick mother, and becoming a spinster, a pathetic figure, her sternness of manner and abruptness of speech, disguise for an aching loneliness. Referring to her as "Miss Mijares" underlines her primmness, as well as her distance from the carpenter. She is slim and frail-looking, which contrasts with the carpenter's physical streghth and size. The carpenter has a certain grace, poise, confidence "walking with an economy of movement, graveful and light, a man who knew his body and used it well", which comes from being easy in his skin, which Miss Mijares, decidedly, is not. Miss Mijares' over reaction to the discovery that the carpenter has fathered a child by a woman he is not married to reveals...
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...The Trap Kerima Polotan Tuvera I was fourteen when we moved to Cabuyao. We reached the town at night and though it was not quite seven, the streets were empty. I had hoped we would get to it before dark, while there was light enough for people to see us come. We knew no one, of course – “We’ll make friends,” my father had said – and expected no welcome, but having left Tayug with reluctance, I had urged my father during the trip to drive faster so that we might arrive in Cabuyao early enough for someone to see us drive in. That was important to me. “Why, Elisa?” my mother asked, and I could not tell her why, except that I had left behind in Tayug one friend very dear to me. When the day came for us to go, we could not leave soon enough. I wanted the pain of missing Salud to start quickly. She said goodbye to me that morning by the plaza, asking, “Are you taking everything, Elisa? You’re sure?” When Mother frowned, I hated Salud for betraying me. Several times that past year I had told Salud I felt that something was happening to me. I felt I was growing to be another person entirely. “Something’s wrong, Salud,” I said one day – “I’m going crazy.” She had laughed and looked pointedly at my breasts and said. “They’re growing like mine, Elisa.” She had a way of saying things like that, that angered and also disarmed me; she was 18 and the four years between us yawned like an abyss. During all that time I had watched her turn into a lovely, graceful girl, unfazed by adolescence...
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