A05

Question 1

What dies Winterson say about her reasons of including allegories?

Answer 1

She does it to escape ‘the dull reality of the clock.’

Question 2

What does Winterson say about the Sir Perceval allegory?

Answer 2

The Sir Perceval ends badly, but not hopelessly. Tragedy at its most bleak contains an energetic core of hope.

Question 3

What does Winterson say on identity?

Answer 3

Adopted children are self invented because we have to be, we arrive with the first pages of our story torn out.

Question 4

What does Mendez say in regards to the Bible?

Answer 4

The novel criticises intolerance preached by the Bible towards different world views and sexualities.

Question 5

What does Mendez say on Jeanette finding her identity?

Answer 5

In the end Jeanette does not need to be saved by a man: she is ultimately saved by her faith in her true self.

Question 6

What does Paulina Palmer say on Jeanette’s construction of identity?

Answer 6

Jeanette instead of uncovering a single static identity constructs for herself a series of shifting selves by means of the acts of story telling and fabulation.

Question 7

What does a freudian reading of the novel say about adulthood?

Answer 7

Freudian reading view the break with the mother as a key point in the progress towards adulthood.

Question 8

What is the post-structural approach to the novel?

Answer 8

• the novel subverts the normally male centred narrative of social conformity.
• The use of stories to understand reality and experience. The use of Biblical stories, myths and fairytales destabilises the idea of identity and subjectivity.
• It does not follow the usual conventions of a buildungsroman due to the use of magic realism.