Filipino Youths and Maidens
Manners and Social Condition of Filipino Girls—Sentimental Boy Lovers—Love-making by Proxy—How Courtship is Usually Performed—Premature Adolescence of Filipino Youth—The Boda Americana—Filipino Girls Are Coquettes, But Not Flirts—Exposure of Filipino Girls to Unchaste Conversation—Unceasing Watchfulness over Girls—Progressive Changes in All the Above Matters.
With regard to their women the Filipinos are an Occidental people rather than an Oriental one. Marriage is frequently entered upon at the will of the parent, but few parents will insist upon a marriage where the girl objects. While the social liberty accorded a young girl is much less than what is permitted in our own country, there is no Oriental seclusion of women. Children accompany their parents to balls and fiestas, and maidens are permitted to mingle freely in society from their baby-hood. At fourteen or fifteen they enter formally into society and begin to receive attentions from men. In the upper classes seventeen or eighteen is the usual time for marriage. By the time a girl is twenty-two or twenty-three she is counted passée, and, if unmarried, must retire into the background in favor of her younger sisters.
The young girls are exceedingly attractive. They are slender, and their heads sit beautifully above long swan-like necks. They dress their hair in a rather tightly drawn pompadour, and ornament it with filigree combs set with seed pearls, or, if they are able, with jewelled butterflies and tiaras. Jewellery is not only a fashion here, but an investment. Outside of Manila, Iloilo, and Cebu, banks are practically unknown. The provincial man who is well to do puts his money into houses and lands or into jewellery for his womankind. The poor emulate the rich, and wear in imitation what their wealthy neighbors can afford in the real.
A Filipino Mother and Family
All the children except the baby attended the public school.
Filipino women never affect the dominating attitude assumed by young American coquettes. They have an infinite capacity for what we call small talk and repartee; and, as they never aim for brilliancy and are quite natural and unaffected, their pretty ways have all the charm that an unconscious child’s have. They love dress, and in one lightning flash will take you in from head to foot, note every detail of your costume, and, the next day, imitate whatever parts of it please their fancy and fall in with their national customs. They are adepts at mimicry and among themselves will lash us mercilessly. They straighten up their shoulders, pull in the abdomen, and strut about with a stiff-backed walk and with their hands hanging stiffly at their sides. They themselves are full of magnetism and can advance with outstretched hand and greet you in such a way as to make you believe that your coming has put sunshine in their lives. Their chief talk is of lovers in the two stages of pretendiente and novio, and they are full of hints and imputations to one another of love affairs. Among young people, in spite of the restrictions put about them to keep the opposite sexes from meeting tête-à-tête or the remotest chances of “spooning,” the air is surcharged with romance. Apparently the Filipino boy has no period in his development in which he hates girls. At twelve or fourteen he waxes sentimental, and his love notes are the most reeking examples of puppy love and high tragedy ever confiscated by an outraged teacher. When written in the vernacular they are not infrequently obscene, for one of the saddest phases of early sentiment here is that it is never innocent; but in English they run to pathos. One ludicrous phase of love-making is the amount of third-person intervention—an outsider thrusting himself into the matter to plead for his lovelorn chum. For some years I made a collection of confiscated billet-doux, but they were destroyed in one of the frequent fires which visit Manila. I can, however, produce a fair imitation of one of these kindly first aids to the wounded. This is the prevailing style:
Miss ——,
Lovely and Most Respectable Lady:
I am do me the honor to write to you these few unworthy lines to tell you why you are breaking the heart and destroying a good health of my friend Pedro. Always I am going to his house every night, and I am find him weeping for you. He is not eating for love of you. He cannot sleep because he is think about your eyes which are like the stars, and your hairs which are the most beautiful of all the girls in this town. Alas! my friend must die if you do not give him a hope. Every day he is walking in front of your house, but you do not give to him one little word of love. Even you do not love him, you can stop his weep if you like to send him one letter, telling to him that you are not angry to him or to me, his friend.
I have been informed by several persons that there is an official etiquette about this sort of correspondence. When a boy decides that he has fallen in love with a schoolmate or with any other young girl, no matter whether he knows her or not, he writes her a letter in the first person similar to the above. If she ignores the letter utterly, he understands that he does not please her—in brief, that “No Irish need apply.” But if she answers in a highly moral strain, professing to be deeply shocked at his presumption, and informing him that she sees no way to continue the acquaintance, he knows that all is well. He sends her another letter, breathing undying love, and takes steps to be introduced at her home. Once having obtained a calling acquaintance, he calls at intervals, accompanied by seven or eight other young men, and, in the general hilarity of a large gathering, endeavors to snatch a moment in which to gaze into the star-like eyes of his innamorata, or to gloat over her “hairs which are the most beautiful.”
The lover’s habit of fortifying himself with the society of his fellow men would be the last which an American boy could understand. But a Filipino swain rarely presents himself alone at a house to call. He feels, perhaps, that it makes him conspicuous. The whole race, for that matter, is given to the habit of calling in droves. If a Filipino girl goes to an office on business, her mother and father do not constitute a sufficient escort. Her brothers, cousins, a few admirers, and possibly a female friend or two are added to the parental guardians, till the bodyguard assumes the appearance of a delegation large enough to negotiate a treaty. One of the division superintendents tells a story which shows the humorous American recognition of the inconveniences of this habit. The Superintendent had recommended two young girls as pensionadas, or government students, in the Manila Normal School. It was their duty, on arriving in Manila, to report to the Director of Education; and they must have done so in the usual force, for the Director’s official telegram, announcing their arrival, began in this pleasing strain: “Miss—— and Miss——, with relatives and friends, called this morning.”
The premature adolescence of the Filipino youth makes him very repellent to the American. One of the most frightful things which I ever saw was a play given in Spanish by children. The play itself was one which Americans would never have permitted children to read or to see, much less to present. The principal character was a debauched and feeble old man of the “Parisian Romance” type; it was played by a nine-year-old boy, who made the hit of the evening, and who reminded me, in his interpretation of the part, of Richard Mansfield. His family and friends were proud of his acting, which was masterly, and laughingly declared that his conception of the role was wholly his own. If so, there was no need of laughter and there was much cause for tears.
Here is a short essay written by a twelve-year-old boy, in response to an order to write a composition about what he had done the previous day.
“Yesterday I called upon all my young lady friends. None but the fathers appeared. We must all be judged according to our works.”
The child wrote this by constructing the first sentence himself, and by picking the other two out of phrase-books, which from some source or other are scattered all over the Philippine Islands. What he meant to convey in the carefully pieced mosaic was that he was a dangerous fellow, and that when he came around the fathers kept a close eye on their daughters. That is dubious wit in a man of thirty. In a child of twelve it is loathsome.
Engagements are usually announced at once and are seldom long—from three weeks to three or four months. If the marriage is really for love, as is not infrequently the case, the lovers must have a hard time of it; for they never see each other alone, and “spooning” before others would seem to them in the last degree scandalous. They have marvellous self-control. I have watched many a pair of Filipino lovers for the stolen glances, the shyness, the ever-present consciousness of each other which are characteristic of our lovers, and I have never beheld the faintest evidence of interest in any engaged or newly married couple. They manage to preserve an absolutely wooden appearance at a time when one would expect a race so volatile to display its emotions freely.
Elopements sometimes take place and are called the boda Americana, or American marriage. However, they have the advantage of us in one kind of elopement—that of the widow. Runaway marriages between widows and old bachelors are not a common feature of American life, but they seem to constitute the most frequent form of elopement here. Forced marriages occur in spite of the restrictions put around young girls. They cause a ten days’ hubbub, winks, nods, and much giggling behind fans. But no social punishment and ostracism of the girl follows as in our own country. So long as the marriage is accomplished, the Filipinos seem to feel that the fact of its being a little late need disturb no one. But if, as sometimes happens, a girl is led astray by a married man, then disgrace and punishment are her lot. I recall a circumstance where a young girl under a cloud left her native town, never to appear there again. But less than three months after her banishment, her seducer was an honored guest, sitting at the right hand of her brother, in the brother’s own house. Apparently the best of feeling prevailed over a matter that with us could never have been forgiven, though bloodshed might perhaps have been averted.
In my eight years in those Islands I have met among the upper classes but one young girl whose conduct offered reason to men to take her lightly. In a pretty, childish way, Filipino girls are coquettes, but they are not flirts. Their conception of marriage and of their duty to their own husbands and their children is a high and noble one. Nevertheless, with innately good and pure instincts, they cannot take half as good care of themselves as can the American girl who is more indiscreet, who knows much less of the matters pertaining to love and sex. The latter has an infinite advantage over her dusky sister in the prudery of speech which is the outwork in a line of fortifications in which a girl’s tenacity to her own ideal of chastity must be the final bulwark, A frankness of speech prevails in the Philippines with regard to matters about which we are frank under necessity, but which, as far as possible, we slide into the background. Stories are told in the presence of young girls, and jokes are interchanged, of more than questionable nature according to our standards. Our prudery of speech is the natural result of the liberty permitted to women. When the protection of an older woman or of a male relative is done away with, and a girl is permitted to go about quite unattended, the best and the surest protection that she can have is the kind of modesty that takes fright at even a bare mention, a bare allusion, to certain ordinarily ignored facts of life.
The result of general freedom of speech and the process of safeguarding a girl from its results is to make a Filipino girl regard her virtue as something foreign to herself, a property to be guarded by her relatives. If, through negligence or ignorance on the part of her proper guardians, she is exposed to temptation, she feels herself free from responsibility in succumbing. Such a view of life puts a young girl at a great disadvantage with men, especially with men so generally unscrupulous as Filipinos.
Among the lower classes there is no idea that a young girl can respect herself or take care of herself. Girls are watched like prisoners, and are never allowed to stray out of the sight of some old woman. It is almost impossible for an American woman to obtain a young girl to train as a servant, because, as they say, we do not watch them properly. This jealous watching of a child’s virtue is not, however, always inspired by the love of purity. Too frequently the motive is that the girl may bring a higher price when she reaches a marriageable age, or when she enters into one of those unsanctified alliances with some one who will support her. Filipino men are merciless in their attitude toward young lower-class girls, not hesitating to insult or annoy them in the most shameless way. I once forced a little maid of mine to wear the regular maid’s dress of black, with muslin cap and apron, and she was certainly a joy to the eye; but one day I sent her out on an errand, and she came back almost hysterical under the torrent of ribald admiration which my thoughtlessness had brought upon her. A seamstress will not remain alone in your house while you run into a neighbor’s on an errand without bolting herself in the room; and, if you are to be gone any length of time, she will not stay there at all, simply because she is afraid of your men servants—and justly so.
However, in respect to such matters, things are changing fast. The Filipinos who love us least, high or low, rich or poor, admit that the American idea of treating every self-respecting woman with respect is a good thing. They remark frequently the difference between now and former times, and say, with admiration, that a woman can go past the cuartels or the fire stations, without encountering insult in the form of galanteria; and the electric street-car line, suspected at first, has gained the confidence of nearly all. Many Filipino families of the upper class permit their daughters to go to and from the American schools on the trolley car, and it is no uncommon thing to see three or four youngsters, all under ten, climbing on and off with their books, asking for transfers, and enjoying their liberty, who ten years ago would have been huddled into a quilez and guarded by an elderly woman servant.
Lastly, a bill for female suffrage was introduced into the Philippine Assembly a few weeks ago. It is one of those “best” things which Filipinos all want for their land. The young man who introduced it had probably been reading about the female suffragist movement in England, and he said to himself that it would be a fine idea to show this dull old world how progressive and modern are the Philippine Islands; and so he drafted his bill. Nothing seems to have been heard of it, and it was probably tabled, with much other progressive legislation, in the hurry of the last days of the session. Another bill was one to put an annual license of one thousand pesos (five hundred gold dollars) on every minister of the gospel, Protestant or Catholic. I suspect its parent of having been coached up on modern French thought. However, that is not pertinent to the woman question. What I desire to do is to give a correct impression of a country where real conditions are such as I have described them, and ideal conditions have advanced to the point of a bill for female suffrage.