Subverting Patriarchy and Colonialism: A Feminist Literary Analysis of Agency, Identity, And Resistance in Nick Joaquin’s "The Summer Solstice"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21684063Keywords:
feminist-postcolonial analysis, colonial ideology, Tadtarin ritual, gender identity, agency and resistance, Philippine literatureAbstract
Using a feminist-postcolonial framework grounded in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s theory of subalternity and bell hooks’ feminist perspective, this study examined agency, identity, and resistance in Nick Joaquin’s The Summer Solstice. A qualitative literary design employed repeated close reading, interpretive coding, thematic clustering, theoretical mapping, and statement-of-the-problem alignment. The novella served as the primary research corpus, while feminist, postcolonial, ritual, symbolic, and masculinity scholarship supported the interpretation. The findings showed that Lupeng’s early identity was shaped by colonial Catholic discipline, bodily regulation, gendered shame, epistemic hierarchy, class authority, and naturalized masculine power. The Tadtarin ritual disrupted the Maria Clara ideal through embodied excess, collective participation, indigenous knowledge, and the reclamation of the female body, although resistance remained partial and historically situated. Solar imagery and oppressive heat represented hierarchical patriarchal dominance, whereas lunar, earth, and ritual imagery expressed cyclical, relational, and communal forms of power. Don Paeng’s characterization revealed masculinity as performative, vulnerable, emotionally restrictive, and dependent on maintaining authority. These themes culminated in a Feminist-Postcolonial Analytical Framework organized around the colonial-patriarchal context, gender construction, colonial ideology, ritual and embodied resistance, symbolic representation, masculinity and power dynamics, and intersectional power relations. The study concludes that identity and agency in the novella are continually reconfigured through negotiation, disruption, cultural memory, and embodied resistance rather than through complete emancipation. The framework offers a culturally grounded model for analyzing Philippine literary texts shaped by colonial and patriarchal histories.
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