Nínay: Costumbres filipinas (in English, "Nínay: Filipino Customs"), is a very obscure and forgotten 1885 Spanish-language novel by the Filipino ilustrado (intellectual), polymath, author-ethnographer, and later diplomat and politician, Pedro Paternonote . It was primarily composed during the midpoint of his long, 2-decade stay in Madrid, during what would turn out to be the last quarter-century of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines, which began some 300 years prior.note
Because Paterno was unlucky enough to escape arrest and Public Execution by the colonial government (yes, he was unluckier alive than dead), and lived long enough to see himself become a "villain" in Philippine history, since he preferred to negotiate with colonial agentsnote rather than criticise or fight them, his Nínay has been almost completely overshadowed by a certain other Filipino novel duology produced in that same period, but that doesn't mean it can't stand on its own merits.
For one, contrary to popular belief, Nínay came out first. It is actually the first known Filipino novel, written by an actual native instead of by some visiting or resident foreigner or coloniser. (It even beat out the said duology to publication by two years: it came out in 1885, whilst the latter had to wait until 1887 and 1891.)
Secondly, while it presents no serious or overt criticisms of colonial rule, that may not have been its point—rather, it seeks to elevate Filipino cultures and customsnote (as indicated by the subtitle) to equal standing with Spanish and other Western cultures. The logic goes that if Philippine native cultures are seen as equal to Hispanic/Western cultures, they are thus worthy of imperial and global attention and representation, and thus—if implicitly—warrants the granting of equal rights to the native Filipino people, something which the Spanish colonisers were simply not willing to grant before or since. In other words, Paterno was in some way arguing for better Filipino representation in metropolitan Spanish media and literature, a campaign that may sound very familiar to people of colour feeling left-out of mainstream Hollywood productions today.
Nínay is named after, and centres around, its—spoiler alert!—deceased protagonist, Antonina "Nínay" Milo y Buisan, whose funeral opens and frames the exploration into the charmed, if tragic, life she lived.
The whole first edition can be read online, for free, here.
The sole known English translation, made in 1907, is available here.note
Contains examples of:
- Aristocrats Are Evil: This isn't presented as an issue of class, since the main cast are also primarily from wealthy, elite Manila families, but the foreign(ish) Federico Silveyro, heir to a landowning family (specifically the Portuguese capitalist Don Juan Silveyro), and Carlos' rival for Nínay's affections, comes off as this.
- Audience Surrogate: The nameless, primary narrator who opens the prologue, and is shown to the house where Nínay's memorial service is under way. He can also be read as …
- Author Avatar: … a stand-in for Paterno himself, who actually went back to the Philippines for a short period in 1882–83, presumably around the time he was working on Nínay. Like him, the narrator describes himself as having left for abroad in childhood and only now returned to his native country.
- Bat Scare: Carlos disturbs a flock of bats when he goes into the cave of Doña Geronima off the Pasig rivernote . Inside is where Berto the bandit is burying his dead girlfriend Loleng, which Carlos helps him with.
- Beta Couple: Berto and Loleng, at least while the latter was alive.
- Big Fancy House: The main and named characters being almost all from wealthy elite native families, naturally their homes are all some variant on this: Nínay's own house is described to be the biggest in the riverside Sta Ana district of Manila, or pretty damn close. These would be in Tagalog called bahay na bato ("stone houses", though usually only the lower levels were stone to accommodate earthquake risk), and often combine indigenous, Chinese and Spanish influences in ornate packages.
- The Beautiful Elite: Nínay, of course, is described as near-angelically beautiful.
- One-Word Title: Not counting the parenthetical subtitle "Costumbres filipinas".
- Character Title
- Cheerful Funeral: Despite much grieving and weeping by the long funeral procession when Nínay is initially buried, the whole pasiyam that follows is marked more as a "celebration of life" for the deceased, with lots of food, donations and gifts given to Nínay's next-of-kin hosting the whole affair, and a long list of her family and friends to come together and share stories about (though not limited to) the deceased.
- Christianity is Catholic: Albeit already Filipinised to an extent. The Virgin of Antipolo, a version of Mary enshrined in an upland province east of Manila, is a constant focus of pilgrimages-cum-vacations by Nínay's family and friends.
- Conveniently an Orphan: Carlos is introduced right when his father died and left him a sumptuous fortune. Ditto with Pilar who enters the story just as her own father is dying, imploring Don Evaristo, his old friend and Nínay's father, to take her in in the process (thus giving Nínay an adoptive sister).
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Federico goes so far as to have Carlos Wrongly Accused—just like with Don Evaristo prior—just so Federico has no obstacles in having Nínay all to himself. Framing Carlos wasn't even in the plan Pilar helped him cook up to get Nínay to fall for him in the first place.
- Death by Despair: How Nínay apparently, finally dies after she witnesses Carlos' death, though the ongoing Manila cholera epidemic certainly can't have helped (and is what in fact kills Carlos).
- Duel to the Death: How Berto finally kills Federico. Classic style with sabres for weapons.
- Engineered Heroics: Pilar convinces Federico to have Don Evaristo framed and arrested—and then swoop in to "save" him, making Federico seem the hero in Nínay's eyes so that in theory she'll turn her affections to him—and leave Carlos open for Pilar who is crushing on him too. Bad enough, if not for Federico then also going after Carlos himself, thus having Pilar's scheme backfire on her.
- First-Person Peripheral Narrator: The nameless, ultimate narrator who gets the whole story from Taric, who himself (though largely written-about in third person) counts for not really being involved in the actual plot involving either Nínay or Carlos.
- Friend to All Living Things: To birds and flowers, at least, since Nínay cares for several delicate native songbirds (whose species are fully described in the footnotes) and spends much of her time puttering around in her family's Edenic garden.
- Footnote Fever: Possibly a full third of the "novel" is dedicated to intimidatingly copious footnotes, as well as four ethnographic appendices after the novel body proper, which suggests that the book is less simply a novel and more a sort-of print version of what would today be called a Mockumentary or docudrama, which combine elements of both informative description and narrative storytelling. (Neither the sole known English or Tagalog translations have included these even in translation, however.)
- Foregone Conclusion: It'll only ever be ironic to call Nínay's death a spoiler, given her whole life story is recounted during her funeral.
- Frame-Up: A frequently used political weapon in this novel, most prominently with Federico Silveyro getting the authorities to arrest innocent Don Evaristo, Nínay's dad, and to hold this over Nínay herself until she gives in to his advances. It's unjust enough that we are never told exactly what the charges (however false) against Don Evaristo are, at least the first time, though later he's charged with complicity in an uprising or riot in Fort Santiago (the Manila dungeon for colonial political prisoners), and then with that, is banished to exile, where he ultimately dies.note
- Clear My Name: Averted, since we never do see either Don Evaristo or Carlos directly try to fight their wrongful accusations.
- Framing Device: The exploration into the deceased Nínay's life is framed within her nine-day wake, in Tagalog called a pasiyamnote . There are nine chapters, each covering one day of the pasiyam in real time, and through it all, indio (native) visitor Taric is orally recounting Nínay's life to the Audience Surrogate.
- Gratuitous French: Some of the footnotes reproduce long, untranslated citations from French primary sources.
- Happily Married: Nínay's parents, Don Evaristo and Doña Carmen, love each other dearly, and together with their innocent daughter make up one small happy family. It pains mother and daughter greatly to no end when Don Evaristo is Wrongly Accused and taken away from them.
- Informed Ability: Nínay is said to know four languages, but it's never explicitly described what languages she uses in all her dialogue. Presumably at least Spanish and Tagalog, since these would've been the most commonly used ones. In addition, she is described as good at painting and the piano, but the novel doesn't linger much beyond that.
- The Ingenue: The eponymous Nínay, naturally, as well as Loleng, Berto's late girlfriend.
- Latin Land: Much is made of how Catholic-lowlander Filipino society has seamlessly incorporated Spanish influences, and being under direct Spanish rule in this time period, the colony literally counts as this.
- Latin Lover: Although the main cast are largely already Hispanicised at least in culture and religion to begin with, the Portuguese father-and-son Silveyros count as the closest example, being foreigners from a hub of the Latin European world, both with designs on the native-Filipino (or at least mestizo) protagonists.
- Missing Child: During their pilgrimage-cum-vacation up in Antipolo, one of Nínay's family's friends, Doña Paz, lets slip how her daughter Loleng went off while the two were bathing in a river, supposedly to pick some flowers, but never came back. The mother has been drawn to tears and nearly to madness trying to find her ever since. (We find out later she eloped with Berto but didn't survive their harrowing escape from what are implied to be colonial authorities on the Silveyros' payroll.)
- National Geographic Nudity: Tik, the indigenous queen of the island where Carlos is grounded on after escaping from Manila, is depicted as being topless, among other things, which also qualifies her for Nubile Savage, below.
- Non-Idle Rich: Nínay's family consider it a point of pride that for all the wealth they already have, they don't just live off it sitting around on their asses all day in the inviting tropical warmth. Nínay herself runs a small jewellery business along with her mother. (This was likely based on Paterno's own Real Life female relatives, many noted jewellers in Spanish-colonial Manila.)
- Nubile Savage: Yes, Tik is described as being quite exotically attractive, but Carlos oddly enough finds little interest in her that way, since he's still fretting about how to get back to Manila and hence to Nínay.
- Official Couple: Nínay and Carlos Mabagsic, the novel's central couple.
- Omniglot: Downplayed, but Nínay is said to know four languages: besides Spanish and Tagalog, she also knows English and Chinese.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Loleng's long-suffering mother Doña Paz is not returned to in-story after her distraught account of her daughter running away to elope with Berto, but pretty soon afterward we witness Loleng's death via Carlos stumbling upon Berto burying her after their exhausting run from colonial authorities.
- Posthumous Character: Nínay, who else. The whole book is like a Happier Home Movie of her.
- Then again, practically all the named cast is dead by the time Taric is narrating their stories. The first named character to die (apart from parents who died in the backstory) is Loleng, whom Taric's audience (and by extension, the Real Life readers) only ever hear of from others, primarily her suffering mother and her boyfriend Berto.
- Purple Prose: Quite likely this is the case for the Spanish original though this would've been expected in 19th-century literature; this is evident even in the rare English translation. Long and lavish descriptions of local settings and emotional exhortations suffuse the whole novel.
- Random Events Plot
- Scenery Porn
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Most of the named families here are some degree of influential, but even above them the Silveyros are powerful and influential enough that they can use it to threaten Loleng's family with ruin unless the latter drop Berto for their daughter's hand.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: This being a 19th-century novel, direct references to sex would be out of the question, but just how close Nínay and Carlos might get is alluded to in a heated embrace that segues into a self-censored extended ellipsis over fifty periods long or so.
- Shout-Out:
- To The Aeneid, when Carlos sailing home from Tik's island is compared to Aeneas sailing for (the future) Rome and leaving Dido.
- Shown Their Work
- Siblings Wanted: Only child Nínay does not herself explicitly voice out a desire for siblings, but Pilar's "adoption" into her family (as Pilar herself is implied to be at the very least in her teens too) is framed as giving Nínay a sister. (Too bad Pilar then lets jealousy over Carlos drive her to ruin her adoptive sister's life.)
- Slice of Life: Helped along by the long footnotes, the novel serves to show general everyday family and love life of an elite subsection of late-Spanish-era Filipino society.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Loleng and Berto, due ultimately to the Silveyros coercing Loleng's family into forbidding her from seeing Berto.
- Starts with Their Funeral: Not so much just starts as forms the Framing Device for the novel. Nínay's memorial service is attended by many family and friends, and this is a pretext to revisit her life and her relationships.
- Taking the Veil: Convinced that Carlos is dead, long after he escaped Manila and (unbeknownst to her) ran aground on Tik's island, Nínay decides to retreat into a convent, foreshadowing what a much more famous Filipina maiden would also be shown doing in a certain nationally-consecrated novel that would come out two years after Nínay's publication. Clearly this was already a common trope in Hispanic literature at the time.
- Time Skip: Between Chapters/Days 8 and 9 of the Pasiyam, three years pass in which Carlos is stuck on Tik's tropical island, whilst Nínay, believing him dead with no way for either of them to contact the other, refuses all other suitors and retreats into a convent.
- Tropical Island Adventure:
- Life in the Philippines (the specific island being Luzon) in general is presented as this: a romanticised, idyllic experience with local indigenous and Hispanicised culture on full display.
- In Chapter/Day 8 of the Pasiyam, narrator Taric retells how Carlos Mabagsic, Nínay's beloved and fiancé, leaves Manila and is shipwrecked on another, distant island, where he discovers an indeterminate indigenous tribe (it's meant to be a fictional mashup and has inherited cultural influences from India, among other things).
- Ur-Example: Of the Filipino-authored novel. Nínay is the first known novel by a Filipino of primarily native ancestry, rather than by a peninsular or insular (Philippine-born) Spaniardnote , or any other foreigner for that matter.
- Viewers Are Morons: Why else the extensive Footnote Fever? Paterno makes great show of introducing to his presumed readership the vast array of traditional Filipino customs in and around Manila, and citing numerous third-party sources to define native terms and at least give the impression of scholarly legitimacy to his descriptions.
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Write What You Know: Paterno was from one of the most elite native-Filipino (albeit with significant Chinese ancestry) families in the colonial Philippines, and so his characters almost all reflect that kind of socioeconomic background as well. - Year X: The novel literally opens with this sentence: "In 18… the cholera wrought havoc in Manila."
