A Feminist Reading Of Jeanette Winterson — страница 3

  • Просмотров 755
  • Скачиваний 13
  • Размер файла 24
    Кб

perspective. His viewpoint is male orientated and he defines women’s roles by their relationships with males. It is here that it should be recalled that Henri is the male puppet in the hands of Winterson, a female puppet master. Winterson uses both a male and female narrator, thus restoring the usual `male-perspective’ imbalance to a state of equilibrium. There is very little difference between the language and styles of the speakers. When the narration first changes from Henri to Villanelle, the reader cannot immediately detect the switch. This apparent use of an ungendered narrator is somewhat misleading as both voices are actually that of Winterson: a female. There is a sense that as Henri explores this female room he is out of place. He has entered something of a

`wild-zone’ and there is an atmosphere of intrusion; Henri has violated a female space. Many representations of females throughout the text exist in opposition to Villanelle. By presenting more traditional, patriarchally governed images of women, Winterson makes the contrast with the story’s central female character seem all the more marked. One such representation is the mermaids described by Patrick. He claims that it is these mysterious females that take the lives of the soldiers, `it’s the mermaids lonely for a man that pull so many of us down’ (p.24). Here two stereotypes are established: firstly, the notion of the female as strange, a sexual mythical figure; secondly, the portrayal of women as dependent on males for sexual fulfilment. There is also a sense of the

mysterious about Josephine. Henri cannot write about her, `She eluded me the way the tarts in Boulogne had eluded me’(p.36). The passage in which Henri encounters these `tarts’ provides an interesting example of male/female polarity. While the highly unpleasant cook is the embodiment of many aggressive male characteristics, there is a special quality of sensitivity amongst the whores. The cook is aggressive, he strikes the whore and insults her. He is in competition with the other men, not their friend. The whores, on the other hand, exhibit a sense of sisterly closeness, one kisses her `companion’(p.15) sensitively. It is ironic that one of the whores rather than the brutal cook commits the decisive act of violence. The whores, despite the indignities to which society

subjects them, still command much respect from Henri. Another group of women are the victims of a society in which the rules are decided by men, are the vivandieres. The great irony is that these women have nothing to be lively about, they have no life. It is fitting that vivandieres, who are denied a life of their own, are female misfits: runaways, strays, younger daughters of too-large families, servant girls…. and fat old dames.(p.38) It is these females, who do not fit into convenient categories of the patriarchal framework, that are shared among the officers like food supplies. One of the key methods used by Winterson to undermine some of these features of the patriarchal systems is through a parody of the conventions of the fairy-tale. This technique has also been

effectively employed by Angela Carter. Carter describes herself as being in the `demythologizing business’6 and by making subtle inversions to traditional fairy-stories she undermines patriarchal culture; a culture she views as characterized by falseness: the literary past, the myth of folklore and so on, are a vast repository of outmoded lies.7 Jeanette Winterson uses a similar method to expose these `outmoded lies’. Rebecca O’Rourke describes Winterson’s characters as inhabiting `the semi-real, semi-fantasy world’.8 Much of The Passion resembles a historical account infused with myth. Winterson challenges the traditional relationship of fantasy and reality with dates and battles intertwined with fantastical tales of a race of web-footed people in a city of mazes. A

passage that does much to undermine the mythology that Carter describes as `the extraordinary lies designed to make people unfree’9, is that in which Villanelle pursues the beautiful woman whom she has seen at the casino. The first indication of a fairy-tale parallel is the firework display that commences at midnight, evoking images of pumpkins and handsome princes in the tale of Cinderella. Such tales are often parodied in feminist writing which challenges the `happily-ever-after’ conventions of these comfortable heterosexual tales. A cautionary reminder that this is not a fairy-tale in the traditional sense is offered by Villanelle’s reference to pick-pocketing and bribery. But as with the traditional Cinderella, there is a glass slipper, `faces and dresses and masks and