SEGUNDA KATIGBAK LEONOR VALENZUELA LEONOR RIVERA Consuelo Ortega O Sei San Gertrude Beckett Nellie Boustead Suzanne Jacoby Josephine Bracken

3. Segunda Katigbak, a short woman who hailed from
Lipa, Batangas was considered the puppy love of Jose
Rizal. However, this puppy love of Rizal was already
betrothed to her towns mate, Manuel Luz. Rizal also,
due to his shyness, failed to propose to her but he kept
a record of his feelings and the end of his dream.
It was during one of his visits to his maternal
grandmother, who lived in Trozo, Manila, hat he saw
her. She was a sister of his friend, Mariano, who
incidentally was his companion in the visit.

5. Rizal’s admiration with Segunda Katigbak was
followed by his affair with Leonor Valenzuela who was
a tall lass from Pagsanjan, Laguna. Rizal used an
invisible ink in writing love notes sent to Leonor. The
love notes can be read only through the heat emitted
by a lamp or candle. His last encounter with Leonor
was when he bade her goodbye before leaving for
Spain

7. Leonor Rivera was Rizal's love for 11 years and she was
the reason he tried not to fall in love with other
women during his travels. But, due to Rizal's being a
Propagandist and owing to the fact that he was the
cause of many political problems in Calamba, Leonor's
mother disapproved of the relationship. It is known
that Rizal sent many letters and notes to Leonor, all of
which her mother hid and never gave to her. This
caused Leonor to believe that Rizal no longer had any
feelings for her and she decided to agree to marrying a
man of her mother's choosing - the Englishman Henry
Kipping.

9. During his stay in Madrid, Rizal and some fellow Filipino's
would visit the home of Don Pablo Ortiga. They went there
to visit the Don's daughters, but more specifically, Rizal
went there to visit Consuela, who was considered to be the
prettiest among Don Pablo's daughters. Consuela fell in
love with Rizal and he even wrote a poem for her called A
LA SENORITA C.O. y R. which became one of his best
poems. Yet, keeping in mind that he was loyal to Leonor
Rivera, he backed out before the relationship could get any
more serious. Also, he knew that his friend - Eduardo de
Lete – was in love with Consuela and he did not wish to
destroy their friendship over a girl.

11. O Sei San, a daughter of a Japanese samurai, taught
Rizal the Japanese art of painting known as su-mie.
She also taught Rizal to learn the Japanese language.
During his stay in Japan, Rizal fell in love with his
guide, interpreter, and teacher in the Japanese
language. It is said that if Rizal did not have a personal
mission to accomplish, he would have married O-Sei
San and lived in Japan for good.

13. Gertrude Beckett also fell in love with Rizal but Rizal
hastily left London for Paris to avoid Gertrude who was
then seriously falling in love with him.
In London, while Rizal was working on his annotation of
Morga's work, he stayed in the Beckette family house which
was walking distance from the British Museum where
Morga's work was displayed. The eldest of the Beckette
sisters, Gertrude or "Gettie" as Rizal used to call her, fell in
love with Rizal. He suddenly left for Paris though, in order
to avoid the growing feelings between himself and Gettie.
Before he left, he left Gettie a sculpture of the Beckette
sisters.

15. After learning of Leonor Rivera's marriage to Henry Kipping, Rizal was
able to go back to courting the other ladies. During his stay in Biarritz,
Rizal stayed with the Boustead family, where he became friends with
Eduardo Boustead's two pretty daughters. He would practice fencing
with them at Juan Luna's studio. Antonio Luna, another frequent
visitor to the Boustead residence, was trying to court Nelly but she was
already infatuated with Rizal. This resulted in an ugly scene where
Antonio said some bad words about Nelly while he was drunk at a
Filipino hosted party in Madrid. Rizal then challenged him to a duel,
but Antonio - after sobering up - realized his mistakes and apologized
to Rizal and thus preventing rift among the unified Filipinos in Madrid.
Unfortunately, Rizal and Nelly did not end up getting married because
Rizal did not want to be converted to Protestant and Nelly's mother
didn't want a poor man for ther daughter. The good thing is, they
remained friends and parted as friends when Rizal left Europe.

17. Rizal met Suzanne Jacoby in Brussels and they were
deeply in love with each other.
Due to the high cost of living in Paris during the
1890's, Rizal moved to Brussels where he stayed in a
boarding house owned by the Jacoby sisters. As time
passed by, they fell in love but it was for nothing since
Rizal ended up leaving Brussels, though she did write
him while he was in Madrid.

19. While in Dapitan, late Feb 1895, Rizal met an 18 year old Irish girl.
Josephine Bracken had blue eyes, brown hair and was a happy
character. She was the adopted daughter of George Taufer, a man from
Hong Kong seeking medical help from Rizal. It is said that Rizal was
attracted to her physically, and that his loneliness had taken over and
that it was better than to be in love again. Surprisingly, the Rizal sisters
thought that Josephine was a spy for the friars and considered her a
"threat to Rizal's security." In time, Rizal proposed to Josephine but she
wasn't prepared to make such a big choice, since she still had to look
after her blind father. Unfortunately, George Taufer's illness could not
be treated so he went back to Hong Kong while Josephine stayed with
Rizal's family in Manila. When she returned to Dapitan, Rizal tried to
arrange for their marriage with Father Antonio Obach. the priest,
however, wanted a retraction as a precondition to marrying them.
Thus, Rizal took Josephine as his wife even without the Church's
blessing, at the urging of his family and with her consent. She later gave
birth to a stillborn, believed to be the result of some incidence, and this
could have traumatized her.

20. What is it’s implication to the national identity?
For me, the women of Rizal brings an implication to
the national identity. With his mission, they served as
an inspiration and motivation for him to pursue his
decisions and plans to fight for the country. And it is
just a normal phenomenon to an individual to be
repeatedly fall in love with different woman. And this
is a part of Rizal’s colorful stories with his women to
make his life complete.

21. THANK YOU!!!!
PREPARED BY:
RACHEL S. REFORSADO
BSN-III