A Critical Analysis of Amador Daguio’s Wedding Dance free essay sample

There is indeed a lot to know and learn about culture. Knowing its definition alone is futile, for there is much about it, and even more when brought out to the surface. Basically, culture affects every part of people’s lives. The ways they act, think, and perceive things are grounded from certain cultures they grew up in. Indeed, to understand people is to know how their culture works, such as its function in the society, and how it shapes their minds and beliefs. In Keywords, Raymond Williams points out that â€Å"culture† is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language, with a long, complex etymology. It was originally used to define that which undergoes a process of tending or cultivation — like a crop or domesticated herds — and was thus initially associated with agriculture. Then during the 18th century, the French started to use the term as a synonym for â€Å"civilization†. We will write a custom essay sample on A Critical Analysis of Amador Daguio’s Wedding Dance or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page With this, many scholars have tried to define what culture is, and how it works. In his essay, Stephen Greenblatt begins by dealing with the idea of culture itself. He quotes anthropologist Edward B. Tylor: â€Å"that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society†. Greenblatt, though, immediately questions Tylor’s definition of culture. As how he puts it, culture has a vague, hardly useful definition; a â€Å"dimly perceived ethos†. However, he offers two factors that may help one’s understanding of it: constraint and mobility. He explains constraint as, â€Å"the ensemble of beliefs and practices that form a given culture function as a pervasive technology of control, a set of limits within which social behavior must be contained, a repertoire of models to which individuals must conform†. Such is true for most cultures. Those beliefs and practices, whether written or not, enforce kinds of behaviors and compel models of practice for their groups. Mobility, on the other hand, encompasses culture as a network of negotiations for the exchange of goods, ideas, attitudes, and even people. Another definition of culture that is worth considering is Matthew Arnold’s in his essay Culture and Anarchy. He defined culture in idealist terms, as something to strive for, and in this respect his theory differs from its anthropological counterpart. Anthropology views culture not as something to be acquired but rather as â€Å"a whole way of life,† something people already have. Just like Greenblatt, Arnold considers the difficulty in defining culture. In fact, it is, according to him, considerably better to explain what not culture is. For Arnold, the opposite of culture is â€Å"doing as one likes,† his term for individuals who act out of self-interest, without regard for the greater good. As early as 1949, T. S. Eliot, who succeeded Arnold redefined the latter’s definition of culture. Culture for Eliot is evidently not the cultivation of the individual mind, or even the canon of its great achievements, as Arnold held, but a common way of life embodied in social institutions, involving moral standards and practices with a tradition behind them. He said, â€Å"Just as man is more than the sum of his body parts, culture is more than the assemblage of its arts, customs, and religious beliefs. All these parts act on one another and to fully understand one you have to understand them all. † The definition of culture, as what Greenblatt and Arnold said, is complex in its own sense, but it has paved way to many scholarly redefinitions of it, and thus, helps to understanding of not just people, but arts and literature as well. Philippine culture may be considered a unique of its kind. Having been colonized by different foreign cultures both from east and west, the blending of many diverse traditional heritages makes its culture multi-faceted. Through a long span of being colonized most especially Spain and America, one can glimpse the Filipino soul trying to express its unique, cultural identity through creativity. In fact, most provinces have their own ways of taking pride of their traditions, and such are evident in how they do things, like folk dances and music, and even arts and literature. Philippine culture is rich in traditions. Even before the Spaniards came, its people already had their own laws and beliefs, most of which are still in practice up to now. A best example will be the indigenous people, who are able to preserve the culture and traditions of their â€Å"ethnos† or â€Å"tribe† as reflected in their communal views on land, their cooperative work exchanges, their communal rituals, their songs, dances, and folklore. Instead of having their own hierarchical governments, each of these communities has its own council of elders who customarily settle clan or tribal wars to restore peace and unity. Such elders rule the tribe and they make sure that the prescribed laws and traditions of the group are implemented and performed religiously. One of the Philippines’ known indigenous tribes is the Ifugaos of the Mountain Province. This group of people, just like most indigenous groups, is said to be untouched by the Spanish colonialism. Their sets of beliefs and practices are innately their own. Furthermore, their culture is known for its legal system, using one of the worlds most extensive oral legal traditions specifying the offense depending on the use of custom law trial by elders (influenced in part by public opinion), or trial by ordeal. Such tradition is evident in Amador Daguio’s short story, Wedding Dance. The story itself stands up and shows how rich Filipino culture is. The tribe where the main characters Lumnay and Awiyao belong in shows how simple, yet rich their way of living is. Their everyday life usually depends on manual labor; men plant and plow the fields while women keep the house clean. Basically they get their food from their surroundings. They don’t have extravagant houses, nor did they have fancy clothes and jewelry. The tribe people live as one. They help one another and they take part in the promotion of common good for all. They are bound together by their customized laws and traditions. Some would be amazed how strong their tradition’s foundation is. However, their tradition being dominant is put into question; whether the tradition itself has done much good to serve its people, or it has gone too far to take away its people’s consciousness and free will. Looking at its title, Wedding Dance has something to do with tradition. In most Filipino ethnic festivities and celebrations like that of a wedding, a dance is indispensable. It stands for a tradition being sacred and essential, something that should never be defied nor questioned. The story revolves on how the characters’ tradition can be an instrument to the preservation of their culture and the promotion of peace, but on the contrary, it also shows how this tradition can demolish the privilege that make one decide for his or her own self, and how it can take away one’s rights to act according to his or her own freewill. More often, women are greatly affected by the imposing rules of traditions. It is because traditions themselves are constructed by the society, and as most people are aware of, the society is created and ruled by men. The Wedding Dance tells about the story of Awiyao and Lumnay who were then happy couples. They had built a life of their own. Awiyao had been a good husband to her, and Lumnay the best wife he could ever have. But such union needed to fall apart as the two were not blessed with a child, Lumnay being regarded as incapabable of bearing a child. In their tribe, to bear a child was a very important element in creating a family and establishing a better relationship between husband and wife; but it is something which Awiyao and Lumnay would never achieve. According to their unwritten law, a husband may divorce his wife and take another if the latter fails to bear a child. No matter how Awiyao loved Lumnay, he could not set aside the fact that a man like him should have a child to carry his name and follow his footsteps. More importantly, if he would not have a child, the other men in tribe would question his masculinity and would even mock him behind his back. Such is pointed out here: â€Å"Lumnay, he said tenderly. â€Å"Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The men have mocked me behind my back. You know that. † Because having a child was an obligation of a married couple, Awiyao had no other options but to leave Lumnay for another woman, Madulimay. This shows how non-negotiable traditions can be. As how Greenblatt explains it, â€Å"if people do something unacceptable, something counter to these ideals, then they suffer the consequences: everything from stares, sarcasm, contempt, or laughter to legal sanctions like imprisonment. The beliefs and values of a culture discourage people from going outside what is appropriate for that society; they are constrained by societys expectations. At the same time, a cultures boundaries are enforced more positively as well. † Lumnay tried her best to bear a child. For seven years, she prayed and sacrificed many chickens to Kabunyan just to please the deity. Lumnay represented the women in their tribe. She was a good wife for she did her house work impressively; but just because of her incapacity to bear a child, all her good qualities as a woman were set aside. Just like Awiyao, she was conformed to their tribe’s unwritten laws, but her situation was even worse compared to that of Awiyao; that is, because she’s a woman. Lumnay’s depressing situation only proves how the society has put women behind men, and how the law gives them more restrictions than freedom. Lumnay portrays a woman who is weak and subordinating; someone who gives in to a man’s authority. She may have wanted to speak up and complain; to go to elders and tell them it was not right, â€Å"Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take a woman. † but at the end, she realized she did not have the courage to do so. The gleaming brightness of the bonfire, their tradition, and her fears commanded her to stop. â€Å"The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the wedding feast. † Daguio had written a great love story with a great sense of ethnicity. Since he himself grew up in the Mountain Province, he had seen through his very eyes the Ifugao culture. The story Wedding Dance more specifically shows how personal love and interest are defeated by culture. Lumnay’s actions and words make the readers feel pity for her and for those whose deep attachment to their tradition makes them a prisoner of it. There is much sympathy in the character of Lumnay. Daguio made sure to point out the prevailing power of culture, that its superiority dominated nature. â€Å"What was it that made a man wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come after him? † Daguio illustrated the possible ill effect of the influence of a tradition. He was able to stir the hearts of his readers on the unfortunate situation of Lumnay brought about by their prevailing culture. Such portrayal showed how culture would always find its way to triumph, and how it maintained beliefs and traditions that evolved in the society. The plot technique that Daguio used in his story is quite impressive. His deviation from the traditional plot structure is a different, yet interesting way of creating a style of his own. Unlike the usual flow of a story where it starts with the introduction until it reaches the problem, Daguio in the beginning of the story already revealed the conflict. What is more interesting about his technique is it (the story) still allows a sense of suspense despite the fact that the conflict is already introduced in the beginning. Furthermore, the setting itself fits the story perfectly. There can’t be more realistic or valid story of a culture than this of which the setting really illustrates such, and the author witnessed such. The use of ethnic objects to stand for something makes the story more realistic and representational. For instance, the sound of the gong, far yet sonorous, spreads throughout the tribe, reaching Lumnay in the deepest corner of her home. The gong sounds triumphant; it is culture that calls for her adherence, inviting her to come, to accept what is about to happen. In addition, the dance, which Lumnay refused to take part in, represents their tradition, for somehow Lumnay felt like denouncing it. Lumnay’s idea of standing against their tradition gives the very impression that culture did not completely prevail on her. If it did, Lumnay wouldn’t even think of standing up against their tribe law, denouncing it for its being unreasonable. In this, Daguio may have shown how imperative and overbearing culture is, and how it seeks to promote order and peace in the society, but it doesn’t prove that it always triumphs. Even Awiyao at one part of the story questioned the urgency of their culture, thinking who or what could have made such notion of the necessity of having a child. It may have shown, through Lumnay’s portrayal, Daguio’s attempt to uncover women subordination and oppression in the society in general. Women’s roles such that of Lumnay’s are often stressed as those concerning with being modest, tender, and submissive. As the story progresses, he gives Lumnay a voice; that of which stands for a woman finding her own way out of the box where she is kept and locked in. Daguio celebrates the innate strength of a woman who can actually stand for what she believes in, and who can fight for what is right. However, such attempt fails as Lumnay’s portrayal is inadequate and blurred. There’s not so much description of Lumnay that can actually put her in the right limelight. His descriptions of Lumnay are vague; they just show how good she is as a wife – a general image that the society created as an important role of a woman. Furthermore, her strengths are not brought out the surface. In fact, the last part of the story confirms how feeble she is; for she has still chosen to heed what is expected of her. Lumnay’s backing out from her judgment only proves that the culture, dominated by men still has taken her a prisoner. Another character that contributes to Daguio’s misrepresentation of women is Maludimay. The reader might not even consider her for she is just mentioned once; but in fact, she has a big role to play. Maludimay is just presented as another Ifugao woman whose only hope is to give her husband a child, just like Lumnay’s. The story does not really focus on how Lumnay is treated unfairly and fights against it, but rather how she is mistreated by such tradition, and how she permits it in doing such. Daguio only gives the readers a false and a shattering hope of women liberation. So much is made of male authors difficulties writing good female characters. Since 1983 in Showalter’s time, there have emerged male critics who self-identified themselves as feminists. Since then, debates on the â€Å"possibility† of men’s relation with feminism have become a recurring issue in the realm of gender studies. In an early version of Men in Feminism, Stephen Heath writes, â€Å"Men’s relation to feminism is an impossible one. † As Heath puts it, â€Å"the point after all is that this is a matter for women, that it is their voices and actions that must determine the change and redefinition. Women are the subjects of feminism, its initiators, its makers, its force . . . Men are the objects, agents of the structure to be transformed, carriers of the patriarchal mode; and my desire to be a subject there too in feminismto be a feministis then only the last feint in the long history of their colonization. † Heath made a point that men who enter the discourse of feminism may attempt to colonize it. Furthermore, men who try to be feminists cannot take away from them the patriarchal moves that women denounce. In Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism, Laura Claridge and Elizabeth Langland offer a central insight of patriarchy that one has to consider – it is a gender-complicated term that initially defines a male writer’s resistance to and defiance of an ideology as â€Å"feminist†. That is, their unexamined assumption was that antipatriarchal activity would necessarily encompass feminism. In other words, criticisms offered by men are inevitably patriarchal, and that they will always carry with them no matter how they work their way out of a constricting male language. To add further, Claridge and Langland mentioned, â€Å"Although many male writers are interested in a space or possibility for expression coded as â€Å"feminine,† they are not necessarily interested in particular women and their plights – or even the general plight of the generic â€Å"woman†. A male writer may simply need the space of what he or his culture terms the feminine in which to express himself more fully because he experiences the patriarchal construction of his masculinity as a constriction. † Daguio failed to liberate Lumnay from her tribe’s gender bondage because, in the first place, he himself belonged to, and a member of the patriarch. Although he had been a witness of such tradition, he would never be able to effectively portray Lumnay as a victim because he was not a woman; and therefore wouldn’t realize how it felt to be a woman, resulting to his one-sided portrayal of Lumnay. More importantly, since he belonged to the discriminating group, he would not be able to portray any female character properly. Cultural practices have given an enormous impact on gender roles. They influence how men and women think about themselves within their gender roles. For instance, men are expected to be independent, assertive, and competitive; women are expected to be more passive, sensitive, and supportive like Lumnay who is bound to do her duties and responsibilities in the tribe imposed by what they call â€Å"the elders†, the lawgiver, and the male leaders of their tribe. Women are forced to behave in the way the society considers appropriate. It is therefore a struggle for women to be fully liberated; and to do such, the society itself must do it. But there have been ways to make others aware of women’s depriving situation. In fact, literature has done quite well, if not best, to reveal the issues concerning women. However, only female writers can do best in discussing issues that their gender group experiences, for there’s no better way of making these issues known than doing it themselves, for they are the inferior and the oppressed. References Books Boone, Joseph and Cadden, Michael. Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism. Routledge. 1990 Claridge, Laura and Langland, Elizabeth. Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism. The University of Massachusetts Press. 1990 Electronic Journals Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism. Oxford University Press. 1878. Greenblatt, Stephen. Culture. Critical Terms for Literature Study. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. University of Chicago Press. 1995.