THE TENSIONS BETWEEN FEMINISM AND LOVE IN SIRI HUSTVEDT’S THE SUMMER WITHOUT MEN

Abstract

Abstract: This essay investigates why and how inequalities in heterosexual love relationships persist in The Summer without Men, even though the protagonist as a narrator is engaged in a feminist critique throughout the novel. Materialist feminism and previous research on the novel is used to examine how the protagonist and the other women in the novel balance between conforming to and resisting patriarchal norms. Simone de Beauvoir’s theories on patriarchy, marriage and love are used to examine how the protagonist’s parents are important in her understanding of love and gender and reveals how her upbringing has influenced her to lose her transcendence in her own marriage. Lena Gunnarsson’s theory on ‘conformist and resisting strategies’ explain the mechanisms that the protagonist and the other women balance between in order to get love. In the end, the protagonist seems to settle for the ‘conformist strategy’ and take back her husband who left her for another woman, even though she does not believe that he can change. This implies that the novel, although there is a feminist critique throughout it, does seem to recycle some problematic ideas of gender and legitimize unequal heterosexual love relationships.