A Question of Values: Narrative Consciousness in El mismo mar de todos los veranos

Abstract

Esther Tusquets has been accused of promoting conformist and masculinist values in her writing by some feminist critics. The first two novels of her trilogy conclude with troubling rape scenes in which the protagonist and victim is partly complicit, and in which she takes masochistic pleasure. It has been said, with respect to her first novel, El mismo mar de todos los veranos, that this amounts to a betrayal by the author of both her character and her reader. Feminist texts are meant to be subversive; Tusquets' novels are anything but subversive when they allow for such a violent reimposition of the status quo. The values they subscribe to are therefore highly dubious. But is this a fair judgement? How does the reader determine the values of a text? Using narrative theory, I will argue that through a closer exploration of narrative consciousness in this novel we can make a more nuanced assessment of the text's 'value structure' (Chatman 1990). I will further argue that an analysis of narrative consciousn...