The Animals

This Practice as Research PhD investigates the use of the animal in magical realist fiction, with a particular focus on representations of lesbian identity and queer relationships. It situates magical realism within the contemporary landscape, and considers how animals function both as symbols/metaphors, and as characters with agency. Alongside this, the thesis explores intimacy across human-human and human-animal relations, including the spectre of bestiality and the possibility of identity transition. These concerns inform the creative component, a novel entitled The Animals.

The thesis addresses four key questions:

1. How have animals been deployed in contemporary magical realist literature, and what functions have they served?

2. How might animals operate simultaneously as metaphors of identity and suppression, and as characters in their own right?

3. How can animals illuminate the complexities of intimacy, desire, and power in lesbian and queer dynamics, within magical realism works?

4. How might human-animal crossings - intimacies, bestiality, and transitions of identity - interrogate the boundaries between species, selves, and communities?

The Animals is a magical realist novel concerned with identity, sexuality, and suppression. Structured in four sections, it moves backwards in time through the life of its protagonist, Alba. Each section is marked by a distinctive animal presence - horses, tigers, snakes - converging in the final part. Framed as a letter to her former partner Elise, the narrative combines confession and retrospective commentary in a futile attempt to 'set the record straight.'

Across the novel, animals express both marginalisation and resistance, exposing suppressed aspects of Alba's identity and the conflicts most sharply felt in her relationship with Elise.

The thesis demonstrates how magical realism can interrogate the animal as both metaphor and material presence, extending the mode by situating such explorations within a lesbian context rarely addressed in the field.