How should women be treated? Should they be treated a degree lower than men? Timothy John Tolentino’s “Gamugamong Talim” relates to us the fate of a woman under a reprobate husband. The story discloses primarily how a woman, a wife in particular, is maltreated and overpowered in her own domicile.
The story opens with the narrator’s reminiscence of her past under her mother’s afflicting hands. When Flora was on her eighth years of existence, she was not only repeatedly reminded by her mother how to be physically ready and emotionally strong but was also subjected to physical training. She was made to kneel on a saucer of salt for one hour. Then she was even pierced with ten needles in the different parts of her body for about 30 minutes. Such are the things that Flora kept on inquiring about for seven years. She just couldn’t get the point why she had to suffer in that way, for only to find out that one day she would be seeing her mother hanged herself.
After recollecting her unpleasant memorable past, Flora faces her current state, during which she overcooked rice, which causes her to taste the bitterness of her husband’s fists. Before the affliction, Flora always bids her daughter to hide under a bed. That was always the case to keep her daughter safe. Then, Flora was again brought to the world of physical distress and excessive maltreatment. At first she kneels and then eventually thinks how utile her past sufferings were with her mother. After releasing his wrath, her husband, Victor, asks apology and just demands “sorry” from Flora. In that night, Flora dreams of her mother who, dressed in black, was poked with ten spears at her back. Flora sees her mother blow with “gamugamong may talim”
The next day, Flora goes to town to pay bills and buys a sharpening stone for the blunt knife in the house. Upon getting home, Flora proceeds to the kitchen for cooking and prepares the knife for sharpening. While doing it, she also tells her daughter, Kristina, to bring down the family’s used clothes to wash for the next day. However, on her way down, Kristina calls her mother and shows her a letter addressed to Victor. It is from Victor’s praised student, Josefa, who disruptively informs and blatantly blames Victor of her being pregnant.
When Victor gets home, Flora deceivingly creates a story about Josefa’s parents’ claims against him. Subsequently, Victor climbs upstairs and, after a while, goes down bursting with wrath. He suddenly gets the knife and attacks Flora, but Kristina covers her mother and intercepts the stab. Victor runs away and Kristina is admitted to a hospital. For a span of days, Kristina gets herself back to normal while Victor gets caught and is subjected to stay inside a rectangle of iron bars.
One night, Flora again dreams of her aghast-looking mother who was bringing with a knife. Her mother insists to perform that the ritual she did to Flora be done to Kristina. On her defense, Flora confronted her mother that such a thing is not the real sort for shaping one’s braveness. Flora fights with her mother and eventually wins over her. The story ends with Flora’s dreaming that she transforms into a “gamugamo” without “talim.”
To take a closer look at the story through feminist approach, one must consider (a) patriarchal premises and resulting prejudices, (b) sexism, and (c) social roles of women the text manifests.
The reader will notice the salient issue in the story, the domination of men in the world where both women and men are supposedly equal. In the case of Flora, despite the fact that she admits “…binubugbog ako ni Victor dahil nagpapabugbog ako,” (177) it is still not a reasonable ground that she has to be inhumanely treated. She is still worthy of respect from others, most especially from a closely and legally direct person to her life, her husband. Moreover, Flora is not only an object of direct physical harassment but also verbal abuse. She is even told by Victor as “walang kwenta” (181), which invokes defiance of the laws of mankind and of the divinity.
As for Flora’s mother, it could be deduced that she imposes peculiar physical training to Flora for the reason that she herself was once, most likely, a victim of assault whether it be physical and/or emotional. No sane mother would willingly inflict pain to her own child without any cause at all.
Another form of injustice, depicting improper tagging and branding of social roles of women, is Victor’s deception to a student named Josefa for his iniquitous mundane desire. He falsely told Josefa that she would not reach the point of provoking social disdain, that is, getting pregnant at an unexpected time. Thus, Josefa was portrayed as an object of torrential sexual desire, thereby resembling young ladies as sexual subordinates of males.
In general, “Gamugamong Talim” exposes how women are regarded in the society as metaphorically symbolized by Flora’s family. Thus, the story just vividly unveils the issue regarding patriarchal supremacy, which has been taking place yesterday, today, and hopefully not “tomorrow.”
Reference
Meneses, Danilo, ed. 30 Piling Kuwento 2003. Taytay, Rizal: Photto News Publishing House, 2004.
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