1 DALAGANG GULANG: THE OLD MAID IN CEBUANO SHORT FICTION BY WOMEN Hope Sabanpan-Yu “Women who never married were seldom assumed to have consciously made that choice. A common assumption persisted that they were physically unattractive or psychologically incapable of marriage. Ridiculed as old maids’ and relegated to the margins of society, where they lived out narrowly defined lives as school teachers, menial workers, or members of the religious orders….” -- Lucia Bequaert, Single Woman Alone and Together INTRODUCTION The dalagang gulang ‘old maid’ (from Ceb. tigulang ‘old’ and dalaga ‘unmarried female’ is a contradictory figure in Cebuano society and literature. Always perceived as existing outside marriage, she is a figure central to the institution nevertheless. Variations of the term are dalagang lagas ‘withered maiden’ (Wolff 1972: 195) and dalagang ulay ‘chaste maiden’ (Hermosisima 1966: 622). In this paper I will show how her gendered representation is played out in the “married/unmarried” dichotomy in Cebuano short fiction by women – not by the impartial ethnographic observer (Brandewie 1973). Scant attention has been paid to the old maid despite a number of studies that have been done in the past thirty years on Filipinas in society and history. Only a few are devoted to unmarried women (Santiago 2005, Camagay 1995). In this article I choose as my sample of old maid characters those active, wise women one finds in the stories of Cebuano women writers like Quijano, Alforque, Kabigon, Divinagracia, Burgos, Monteverde, and Espina-Moore. How do we usually think of singlehood? The figures created by these writers are quite the opposite of the undesirable, frustrated, severe unmarried women most of us picture as “old maids.” Instead, they become a literary venue in which to critique marriage – the submission of Dr. Sabanpan-Yu teaches in the Department of Languages and Literature at the University of San Carlos, Cebu. For discussion of her paper she can be reached at <hsyu@usc.edu.ph>.