diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

■His material and bodily misfortunes are compounded by his moral andpsychological shortcomings. Evidently, Rizal wanted this negative reactionfrom the reader. Is there a symbolic message in Dofia Victorina's pathologicalobsession to shed her brown Filipino skin and her native accent, onlyto emphasize her being a native India? What is the message in her marryinga broken Spaniard who earns a livelihood on the strength of a lie?Perhaps one of the more dramatic episodes of Noll me tangere is therevelation of Maria Clata's origins. We must admit thc incident is a bitmelodramatic for contemporary tastes, and could stand more improvementfrom the literary viewpoint. Maria Clara is blackmailed into surrenderingIbarra's written pledge of undying love and loyalty in exchange for hermother's two secret letters revealing her real father. They had been writtenbefore she died. Now, given a choice of either marrying Ibarra and have theidentity of her real parents exposed, or giving up her love by saying the honorof both her mother and her real father, Fray Damaso, she chose the latter. Inadmiration, Ibarra manages to blurt out Maria Clara is a "saint."The incident is a bit too pat, and perhaps too artificial. It can stand literaryimprovement, for as the critics say, like Homer, Rizal aliquando dormitat.But it prepares for the sequel, when Fray Damaso explains himself to hisdaughter. All he wants, he assures her, is her happiness:Could I allow you to marry a Filipino, and see you unhappy as a wife andwretched as a mother? But I could not put your love out of your head. I opposedit with all my strength, I abused all my powers, for your sake, only for yours. Ifyou had been his wife, you would have wept afterwards to see your husband'scondition exposed to all manner of persecution without means of defence . . . . Iknow that your childhood friend was a good man: I loved him as much as I lovedhis father, but I hated them from the day I saw they were going to make youunhappy. . • .24The temptation to focus only on the friar's sexual misconduct in thisepisode is strong, and many have succumbed to it. But that is the best way tomisconstrue Rizal's mind. I suggest rather this is perhaps one more of thosepithy, but pregnant descriptions of the colonial malaise that was victimizingthe Philippines. We can understand how a father can love his child, even ifthat fathej happens to be a friar. But can we excuse a racism condoned by thesociety in which he lived? The native-born indio was legally equal to thepeninsular Spaniard, equally a citizen of Spain. In cases, as was true of Rizalhimself, some of the despised indios and Chinese mestizos were moretalented than the peninsular Spaniards. But in the second half of the198