La madre burguesa evocada por Esther Tusquets

Abstract

In several of her works, Esther Tusquets evokes the figure of a brilliant, contradictory and attractive mother. The image of a woman in her prime life, leading a comfortable but cramped life, can be found in such works as Carta a la madre (1996) or Habíamos ganado la guerra (2007). With the help of essays published by the same author (Ser madre, 2000), my paper analyzes the peculiar way in which these women live motherhood, whether or not in autobiographical works of the author. I also analyze the generational differences that separate female characters of the forties and the fifties, years of victory according to the Franco regime, but sombre times in terms of gender roles.

Throughout her narrative, tusquets  paints an ironic picture and regrets the practical reality that led the regime’s official discourse on women. tusquets shows female figures of the bourgeoisie who are capable and agile, but limited to a closed and empty domesticity, while their daughters rebel against the model. born at  the end of the civil war, evoking barcelona  society and gender elaborations, Tusquets is a novelist attentive both to social injustice and to female limitations.