A Comparative Study on Philippine Epics: Comparison of the Portrayal of Women in Amaya and Matabagka Epics’

Hello everyone today is another day for great topics to be shared. I am sharing a comparative analysis In some of Philippine Literature well-known Epics especially on the images of Women in Amaya and Matabagka Epics’

This article aims to inform the readers about the images of women portrayed in the two epics which could explain the empowerment of women. A comparison between the two is also shown to explicate the different role of women on how she managed to become powerful over the man. On the other hand, this paper shall discuss about the distinct characteristics of a woman as being heroine in patriarchal society.
Body

• Table A. Amaya’s Images as a Heroine
• Table B. Matabagka’s Images as a Heroine
• Table C. Similarities of Amaya and Matabagka
• Table D. Differences of Amaya and Matabagka

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Women in Philippine Epics
Women characters play various roles in Philippines epics, including heroic roles, but readers and scholars generally fail to note and appreciate the full extent of these roles instead, they had focused on male characters and their actions. The experiences and actions of men get more attention than those of women. Notions such as heroism are seen and understood from a male perspective. These biases are built into research tools such as the motif indexes and the hero pattern. In addition, readers’ perception when they heard the word epic what comes first to their mind is about a male hero who fought bad and evils to defend his village.


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Portrayal of Women
Images of women refer to the role, the significance and the portrayal of women in the society. Either woman viewed as the hero or as the heroine. This paper focuses only to the two Philippines epics, Amaya and Matabagka. In the case of these two epics Amaya and Matabagka, women have big role in the society or shall we say a different role in other epics. Amaya is the life and story of a woman blessed with special power. She was born with a twin-snake which will prevail more of her strength to fight the odds in her life. She's a princess who was turned into a slave because of the sad fate of her father. Amaya holds a significant role in a prophecy that will change the course of her life.
She is destined to be a woman warrior who will be the strongest and most powerful human being of her time. Matbagka on the other hand, is a story of a woman who searches the deity of the wind in order to defend her kingdom and her brother. Matabagka is a better strategist than her brother. She decides to marry the Deity of Wind.

Feminist Theory

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These epics can be associated as what we call female epic. Female epic is a concept in literary criticism that seeks to expand generic boundaries by identifying ways in which women authors have adapted the masculine epic tradition to express their own heroic visions. Historically, epic literature has been considered an exclusively male domain, to the extent that epic and masculinity appear to be almost coterminous. Recently, however, feminist literary critics have identified a number of texts written by women which, they argue, deserve to be considered epics, as they have many of the required qualities: emphasis on heroism, nation building, religious authority, a strong quest motif, and significant length. These characteristics can be traced in the two epics.

Amaya

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Amaya is a cloistered princess (binukot) who attains power in a society ruled by male warrior- chieftains. Being a woman, Amaya attains the power of being one of the first women to actually lead a poud or a queen that rule people. This explains also the image of being a powerful woman. It follows the extraordinary career of a woman who turns into a warrior, in contrast to the usual fate of women like her during her time, who were merely reared to be wives of any chieftain (datu) capable of complying with the usually exorbitant bride-price set by their parents. In this, Amaya presents a holistic picture of precolonial Philippine worldview and society, and implies the fluid nature of the latter whereby one could easily go up and down the social ranks depending on personal merits, accomplishments, and the dire circumstances determined by fate.
Thus questions about the show's presentation of a binukot's transformation into a warrior have proved to be both premature, inasmuch as the questions were raised before the show even began airing, and themselves inaccurate, because this overlooks the fact that most female heroines in Philippine epics have effected a transformation from binukots to warriors (e.g., Bae ri Dliyag'n and Bolak Sonday of the Subanon epics, Matabagka of the Bukidnon and Manobo epics, Nagmalitung Yawa of the Sulod epic Hinilawod), as well as the fact that the practice of cloistering a binukot was widespread throughout the archipelago before the arrival of the Spaniards. She was known as the most powerful woman during her time. She existed before Magellan discovered the Philippines.

Amaya's Portrayal
By the image of Amaya being portrayed in this epic proved that women have the significance of becoming a hero in epic. The sex role stereotype has changed in this epic where man displays skill and ability to meet challenges victoriously, the fact that literature reinforces man as the active, dominant agent in society, while portraying woman as a passive and subordinate because woman is depicted in this epic as the most powerful heroine. It means that woman shows as an active powerful than man.

Matabagka

Table B Matabagka images in the epic, is depicted as a woman who possesses the real beauty which led many men to admire her. She also has the inner side of beauty which made her successful as she pursues her plans for the innovation of the bad insight which caused the uneasiness of her beloved brother, Agyo. She does not care about the dreadful things that might happen as she goes along, she only thought of making her brother happy and their kingdom protected. It only shows that she really loved her family as well as their village dweller that she even dared to risk her life just to keep the peacefulness of their land.
Furthermore, her trait as being a highly spirited and independent minded woman made her a true heroine in the story. She is very quick physically and mentally. She never stops to fight until she can still stand by her own two feet. This kind of courage made her husband Imbununga admires her more. The appropriation of the warrior’s costume and weapons that belong to her brother simply gives us an idea of how she became a warrior in replacement of her brother. She fought for something that would make them contented at the end. It is true that she is physically inferior compared to the prowess of her brother, in complement, she is mentally superior since she does things well planned in a very short period of time.
Symbolism
It is her gender which brought back peace in their kingdom. It is through her femaleness, which attracted their foe, was the reason why their main problem was solved productively. In addition, Filipino Feminists claimed that Matabagka represents the current Filipina who possesses an inner and outer beauty, as well as the heroism women hold.

Similarities of Two epics

Table C illustrates the common characteristics shared by the two epics in depicting the images of women. It also showed us the importance of women in the society, their roles in the story presents the respect they deserved. Furthermore, this shows that epic stories give also importance to women that women could also have the ability that we believed only men can have.

Table D represents the differences between the two female characters in epics. It portrays the different images that women act in the two epics, Amaya and Matabagka. This shows the distinction of the two women possessing power to empower men. It implies how women overpowered men by the use of their abilities and skills. These differences prove that women are capable of holding extraordinary capabilities which enables them to fight for the sake of their people.

Conclusion

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I conclude that even in a patriarchal society women exist to be dominant. Even women portrayed differently, they meet to a point where feminism had shown. This means that women have equal rights to men, they should also be given importance in a society. The researchers suggested that to further develop this paper one should have enough time and bigger scope for the improvement. Moreover, researchers recommend also expanding this topic; one should show more epics that illustrates the empowerment of women not just in the Philippines but also in other countries.

Bibliography

• Herminia Quimpo Meñez.Explorations in Philippine folklore
• Damiana L. Eugenio.Philippine folk literature: an anthology
• http://entertainment.inquirer.net/2266/amaya-an-epic-journey-back-in-time.Retrieved.March 20, 2018.
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1849249/reviews.Retrieved.March 18, 2018