Surprisingly, girls as young as Lopez during the Spanish era and later in the early 1900s were already prepared for family life. Their mothers and female relatives would train them from childhood to learn homemaking skills, as these will be expected of them when they get married. Some of the skills taught were cooking, sewing/embroidery, etc.

Those in the middle class who can afford special tutors were further trained in music, French, painting and poetry, presumably so they can in time provide the entertainment during family reunions and in other social gatherings.

In some instances where the families of the brides-to-be still asked for dowries from the grooms, girls who were more skilled were, as it was, "more expensive."

Marriages back then were arranged for convenience. Rich clans would intermarry to keep the wealth intact, while poor families would doll up their daughters in the hope of attracting well-off husbands.

Middle-class circles like Lopez's enjoyed relative freedom in choosing partners, although some families tend to look at the girl's proficiency in homemaking skills and the boy's educational attainment. Lopez's case was almost every young girl's story during her time.

Arranged marriages were still common even after the Spaniards left and the Americans came in the early 1900s. Families were built on the concept that love can be learned in the course of the relationship. It was what one might call a "remnant" custom of more than three centuries of Hispanic colonization, which remained unchallenged until the arrival of the Americans.

Set against the backdrop of the early 1900s, the ambience was one of transitory confusion between Spanish conservatism and American liberalism. As tempting as it may have been to abandon the marriage tradition, Filipinos were not about to give up the haunting image of the delicate Maria Clara...at least not that soon. The practice of arranged marriages and the stereotypical homemaking-oriented upbringing of women persisted well halfway into the twentieth century, although the overwhelming influx of American influences sent the country reeling from a cultural overhaul. Filipinos now take more liberty in engaging in relationships, and consider love as a main consideration in finding a suitable lifetime partner.

Fourteen children and a turn of a century later, Lopez has long passed away, remembered only in the romantic depictions of Maria Clara in her usual pi�a cloth garb and enigmatic smile.