Women’s Role in F. Sionil Jose’s Select Short Stories

Language has been a crucial concept for the vast amount of Filipino literary works, as it is  intertwined with genders and roles. The way words were utilized in literary pieces like F. Sionil's  short stories reflects and reinforces perceptions of gender, shaping how characters and their roles  are understood. In light of this, this study utilized qualitative textual analysis to examine how  women were portrayed in three selected short stories written by F. Sionil Jose, which were  Waywaya, Tong, and Progress. The Verb Taxonomy of Johnson and Young (2002) was applied to  this study to dissect how the selected stories reflect women's roles and gender issues. Through the  categorization of verbs present and directly used among the female characters in the stories, the  findings of the study revealed that limited verbs such as told, said, took, and look dominated the narratives. This indicated that women were passive and submissive across the selected short stories, highlighting their lack of individual autonomy. Given such, this study affirmed that women are portrayed traditionally in their roles. A closer reading of the narratives mentioned above along with other short stories of F. Sionil Jose should be conducted to re-examine it again to understand the diversity of women and the reason behind their portrayals.