The Fictional Avatars of Mrs W: The Influence of the Adoptive Mother and the Birth of Jeanette Winterson as a Writer

Emilie Walezak

doi:10.1515/pjes-2018-0008

.blurhash-client-img { display: none !important; }

The Fictional Avatars of Mrs W: The Influence of the Adoptive Mother and the Birth of Jeanette Winterson as a Writer

Prague Journal of English Studies

Volume 7 (2018): Issue 1 (July 2018)

By: Emilie Walezak

Open Access

|Sep 2018

Abstract

Throughout her writing career, Jeanette Winterson has experimented with her life experience, revisiting in particular the complex relationship with her adoptive mother, Mrs W, in such works as Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), Sexing the Cherry (1989), and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal (2011). This article examines the complex mother-daughter relationship between Jeanette and Mrs W to illustrate the birth of a feminist writer. In answer to her mother’s confiscation of her birth narrative, Jeanette Winterson has fictionalized Mrs W to alter traditional narrative paradigms she deemed repressive. The process has allowed the daughter to open up an enunciative space for herself through performative utterances: “I’m telling you stories. Trust me.” Finally, the parallel drawn between Mrs Winterson and Mrs Thatcher in the former’s fictional avatars highlights specifically the personal political itinerary of the feminist writer.

References

Anon. “The Long View: A Q&A with Writer Jeanette Winterson.” Vogue. 5 March 2012. Web. 30 March 2017.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Bollinger, Laurel. “Models for Female Loyalty: The Biblical Ruth in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature. Vol. 13 No. 2. 1994: 363-380. Print.10.2307/464115
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Brinks, Ellen and Lee Talley. “Unfamiliar Ties: Lesbian Constructions of Home and Family in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories.” Homemaking: Women Writers and the Politics and Poetics of Home. Eds. Catherine Wiley and Fiona R. Barnes. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996. 145-174. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Brown, Kevin and Jack Slater. “100 women: Jeanette Winterson helps children rewrite Cinderella.” BBC News. 22 November 2016. Web. 6 April 2017.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Carter, Angela. “Masochism for the Masses.” Shaking A Leg. Collected Journalism and Writings. London: Vintage, 2013. 233-239. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Cuming, Emily. Housing, Class and Gender in Modern British Writing, 1880-2012. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Print.10.1017/CBO9781316576830
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Duncker, Patricia. “Jeanette Winterson and the Aftermath of Feminism.” “I’m telling you stories”: Jeanette Winterson and the Politics of Reading. Eds. Helena Grice and Tim Woods. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. 77-88. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. Collected Poems 1909-1962. London: Faber and Faber, 1963. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Felski, Rita. Beyond Feminist Aesthetics. Feminist Literature and Social Change. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gold, Tanya. “Page in the Life: Jeanette Winterson.” Telegraph. 28 October 2011. Web. 29 April 2017.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Grice, Helena and Tim Woods. “I’m telling you stories”: Jeanette Winterson and the Politics of Reading. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Griffin, Gabrielle. “Acts of Defiance: Celebrating Lesbians.” It’s My Party: Reading Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing. Ed. Gina Wisker. London: Pluto, 1994. 80-103. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Koedt, Anne, Ellen Levine and Anita Rapone. Radical Feminism. New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lejeune, Philippe. “The Autobiographical Contract.” French Literary Theory Today: A Reader. Ed. Tzvetan Todorov. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. 192-221. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Makinen, Merja. The Novels of Jeanette Winterson. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.10.1007/978-0-230-80259-9
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Rose, Jacqueline. “Margaret Thatcher and Ruth Ellis.” New Formations. 6. 1988: 3-29. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Wallace, Diana. The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900-2000. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.10.1057/9780230505940
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. 1985. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. London: Vintage, 2001. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. 1985. Boating for Beginners. London: Minerva, 1990. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. 1989. Sexing the Cherry. London: Vintage, 1990. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. “Boating for Beginners.” Jeanette Winterson website, 6 December 1990. Web. 24 April 2017.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. Weight. London: Canongate, 2005. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. 2011. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal. London: Vintage, 2012. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. “Adopted. Who am I?” Jeanette Winterson website, 5 July 2012. Web. 30 March 2017.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. “Introduction.” Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. London: Vintage, 2014. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. The Gap of Time. The Winter’s Tale Retold. London: Hogarth, 2015. Print.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Winterson, Jeanette. “Jane Eyre by Sarah Waters, Margaret Drabble, Jeanette Winterson and others.” Guardian. 16 April 2016. Web. 21 April 2017.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article