Folding the Cardboard Olympus: Democratic, Queer, and Feminist Transitions in Esther Tusquets’ The Same Sea as Every Summer

Abstract

This thesis analyses Esther Tusquets’ novel The Same Sea as Every Summer as a historical document to assess how the historical transition Spain went through immediately following the death of Francisco Franco affected Spanish queer and feminist literature. Using a framework adapted from Gema Pérez-Sánchez, this thesis provides a brief overview of gender and sexuality under the Franco regime, followed by an analysis of the novel. It analyses the novel focussing on 5 aspects: the changing economic and geopolitical position of Spain, the depiction of patriarchal figures, the subversive use of mythology, the centring of a taboo lesbian relationship, and the novels failure to fully escape Francoist discourse. This thesis finds that the death of Franco and the ensuing democratic transition provided the grounds for the renegotiation of established patterns and conventions surrounding gender and sexuality, as Tusquets does, but that the patriarchal, dichotomous ideology of the Franco regime did not disappear immediately, and was still a dominant influence on the newly emerging Spanish queer and feminist literature.