Full disclosure: I’m not ethnically Filipino, but I’ve grown up around Filipinos and identify, as a fellow island Southeast Asian, with their culture. I call myself a “Noypi” as a joke – I’m Pinoy, but from the outside in, rather than by birth. =P

But back to Maria Clara. Rizal would probably roll over in his grave if he could see what’s happening to poor MC. While Maria Clara might be co-opted by Philippine schools, Rizal never meant her to be the ideal Filipina woman. Nick Joaquin’s work on Rizal attacks this impression of her, as well as the general sanctification of Rizal and his work (which he claimed kept people from reading Rizal’s books as they were supposed to be read – namely, with pleasure.) She’s just a character among others – Filipinos don’t use Father Florention or Crisostomo Ibarra as archetypes for Filipino manhood, after all. Rizal wanted to entertain and incite – Maria Clara wasn’t supposed to be “ideal Pinay,” but just “Maria Clara,” a sweet mestiza woman in love with an idealist and who just happened to get screwed by Spain.

Do English speakers use Juliet as a placeholder for Anglo womanhood? No, and they shouldn’t.

While I recognize that there IS a phenomenon called “being a Maria Clara,” it has more to do with a constructed image post-Rizal, expressed in Bayanihan’s “Maria Clara suite” with its barongs and waltzes and conquettes, and its adoption by Fil-Am dance troupes.