Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson is a prominent British author known for her innovative storytelling and exploration of themes such as sexuality, gender identity, and societal norms. She gained notable acclaim with her debut novel, *Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit* (1985), a semi-autobiographical work that recounts her upbringing in a strict Pentecostal community and her struggle with her identity as a lesbian. This novel won the Whitbread First Novel Award and was adapted into a BBC miniseries. Winterson's writing is characterized by a unique blend of magic realism and postmodern techniques, evident in works like *The Passion* (1987) and *Sexing the Cherry* (1989), which challenge conventional narratives and perceptions of gender.
As her career progressed, Winterson's style evolved to incorporate more didactic elements, particularly in *Written on the Body* (1992), which examines love and desire through a gender-neutral narrator. Throughout her prolific career, which includes novels, memoirs, and children's literature, she has continued to push boundaries and provoke thought. Winterson’s works often feature rich symbolism and complex characters, and she has received multiple awards, including the E.M. Forster Award and an OBE in 2006. She remains a significant figure in contemporary literature, known for her fearless and inventive approach to storytelling.
Jeanette Winterson
British novelist and author of short stories and nonfiction.
- Born: August 27, 1959
- Place of Birth: Manchester, England
Biography
In a short amount of time, the British writer Jeanette Winterson established a special place for herself in the literary community. Her work began to meet with popular and critical success early on and would go on to be published in fourteen languages. After receiving a degree in English from Oxford University, she set out to look for editorial jobs but met with no success. At an interview for one such job, she told her interviewer stories about her life. The prospective employer encouraged her to write them down, resulting in her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985).
Winterson remains elusive regarding the exact details of her own life, but she refers to Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit as “semi-autobiographical.” The novel details a childhood spent in a Pentecostal community with an overbearing and strictly religious mother. The protagonist, aptly named “Jeanette,” nurtured her skills as a preacher and a potential missionary throughout her youth. However, Jeanette leaves the church and is kicked out of her home when both the congregation she had considered her extended family and her mother reject her upon discovering she is a lesbian. The novel won the prestigious Whitbread First Novel Award and was later made into a miniseries for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit established Winterson as a witty commentator on accepted social standards. Even she expresses surprise that her novels, which question social perspectives that view heterosexuality and religion as undeniable “truths,” could be so popular. Using an unconventional novel structure characterized by a collage of reinterpreted fairy tales, parables, and other metaphorical narratives interrupting the central story, Winterson unveils a social reality rooted in spiritual hypocrisy and, ultimately, patriarchy.
Boating for Beginners (1985), a comical retelling of the story of Noah and the ark with a contemporary consciousness, displays Winterson’s ability to use humor to explore hypocrisy in faith. Her third novel, The Passion (1987), won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for fiction, receiving international acclaim for its unique fusion of the historical and the fantastic. Narrated alternately by Henri, who worships his employer, Napoleon, and the cross-dresser Villanelle, an inhabitant of Venice with webbed feet that allow her to walk on water, the novel examines the Napoleonic era through a magical eye that entwines literal and figurative images in its telling of history.
After The Passion, critics classified Winterson as a novelist of the “magic realism” genre. Her styled use of fantastic imagery makes the figurative appear to be fact in the context of her stories. Sexing the Cherry (1989) provides the best example of Winterson’s success with these methods. The story of a mother, the Dog Woman, and her son Jordan occurs during the Protestant Reformation. The images throughout distort common perceptions of gender by depicting a grotesque female character who carries out acts of cartoonish violence, and by providing a feminist interpretation of what really happens in fairy tales. The novel’s very structure then confuses common perceptions of time by making a transgressive leap into a contemporary time that seems to run parallel to the period already familiar in the main story. A winner of the E. M. Forster Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, Sexing the Cherry earned recognition as a “postmodern” novel. The label that was the source of both its sharpest criticism and its highest praise.
In the 1990s, Winterson began to earn a reputation as an eccentric. Around the same time, there was a marked shift in her stylistic approach to writing. A didactic, though lyrical, language replaced the magic realism and fantasy that characterized much of the wit and thematic substance in her previous novels. Written on the Body (1992) continues Winterson’s explorations into sexual orientation and gender identity but distinguishes this theme only by a conspicuous failure to mention the narrator’s gender. The narrator’s seduction of and eventual parting from a wealthy married woman who has developed leukemia mirrors the controversy enveloping Winterson at that time, as she made public her own affair with the wealthy wife of a well-known British businessperson.
Winterson’s next book, Art and Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd (1994), is considered a dense work because of its epicurean language, symbolic imagery, slim plot, and ethereal characterizations of the three narrators: Handel, Picasso, and Sappho. Through their voices, Winterson explores how definitions of “art” oversimplify its true meaning in the complicated context of individual lives. The “gut” in Gut Symmetries (1997) refers to the physicist’s Holy Grail, the Grand Unification Theory, and tells of the interrelationships between two physicists, a male who has an affair with a female, and the male physicist’s wife, who also has an affair with the female physicist. Winterson uses physics theory as a metaphor for love throughout the book, narrated from the perspectives of all three participants. The PowerBook (2000) moves into cyberspace, with a narrator who is a virtual storyteller named Ali—or sometimes Alix—whose stories open windows—and Windows—into life.
Winterson also periodically published a few short stories. “Psalms” and “Only the Best for the Lord” appeared in 1985 and 1986, respectively, and “The World and Other Places” and “The Lives of Saints” in 1990 and 1993. A collection, The World and Other Places, appeared in 1998. Next, she set her sights on children's literature and wrote a trilogy of novels: The King of Capri (2003), Tanglewreck (2006), The Battle of the Sun (2009). She published a memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? in 2011. She returned to fiction with The Daylight Gate (2012) and The Gap of Time (2015).
As the twenty-first century progressed, Winterson continued to publish. She released Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days (2016), Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of New Ghost Stories (2017), Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere (2018), Frankissstein: A Love Story (2019), 12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next (2021), and Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories (2023). Frankissstein was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2019. Through all her writing, Jeanette Winterson remains an innovative and often controversial writer who tackles the written word without fear and styles it within an often unique and innovative story. In 2006, she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
Author Works
Long Fiction:
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, 1985
Boating for Beginners, 1985
The Passion, 1987
Sexing the Cherry, 1989
Written on the Body, 1993
Art and Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd, 1994
Gut Symmetries, 1997
The PowerBook, 2000
Lighthousekeeping, 2004
Weight, 2005
The Stone Gods, 2007
The Daylight Gate, 2012 (novella)
The Gap of Time: The Winter’s Tale Retold, 2015
Frankissstein: A Love Story, 2019
Short Fiction:
The World and Other Places, 1998
Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days, 2016
Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of New Ghost Stories, 2017
Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories, 2023
Nonfiction:
Fit for the Future: The Guide for Women Who Want to Live Well, 1986
Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, 1995
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, 2011
Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere, 2018
12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next, 2021
Teleplays:
Great Moments in Aviation, 1994
Ingenious, 2009
Children's/Young Adult Fiction
The King of Capri, 2003 (illustrated by Jane Ray)
Tanglewreck, 2006
The Battle of the Sun, 2009
The Lion, the Unicorn, and Me, 2009
Edited Text:
Passion Fruit: Romantic Fiction with a Twist, 1986
Midsummer Nights, 2009
Bibliography
Allen, Carolyn. Following Djuna: Women Lovers and the Erotics of Loss. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2001.
Grice, Helena, and Tim Woods, editors. “I’m Telling You Stories”: Jeanette Winterson and the Politics of Reading. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998.
Harris, Andrea. Other Sexes: Rewriting Difference from Woolf to Winterson. Albany: State U of New York P, 2000.
Jeanette Winterson, www.jeanettewinterson.com. Accessed 9 July 2024.
“Jeanette Winterson.” British Council: Literature, 2017, literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/jeanette-winterson. Accessed 4 Apr. 2017.
Pressler, Christopher. So Far So Linear: Responses to the Work of Jeanette Winterson. Nottingham, England: Pauper, 2000.
Reynolds, Margaret, and Jonathan Noakes. Jeanette Winterson. New York: Vintage, 2003.
Thomas, Johanna, and Jeanette Winterson. “Jeanette Winterson: 'I didn't see this coming.'” The Guardian, 22 Dec. 2019, www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/22/jeanette-winterson-frankissstein-interview. Accessed 9 July 2024.
Waldman, Katy. “Jeanette Winterson Has No Idea What Happens Next.” The New Yorker, 29 Oct. 2023, www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/jeanette-winterson-has-no-idea-what-happens-next. Accessed 9 July 2024.