The Postmodern Representations of Femininity in Jeanette Winterson’s Selected Narratives

Abstract

Identifying femininity has always been linked to gender roles and responsibilities associated with society’s expectations of women. Gender, particularly femininity has been a central concern to feminist theory which has put a great deal of energy to combat traditional gender ideologies about women’s inferiority to men. This research work attempts to contribute to the study of gender in literature through addressing femininity representations in Postmodern British fiction, taking Jeanette Winterson as one of its representatives. The attempt is to analyze Winterson’s novels which are respectively: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), Written on the Body (1992) and Lighthousekeeping (2004) and how they foster to depict the complex reality of female protagonists who are torn between expressing their femininity and societal expectation of women. Winterson presents her heroines in an endless struggle to overcome gender norms and embark on a journey self discovery. In doing so, she relies on postmodern techniques such as intertextuality, storytelling, fairytales and mainly parody of Biblical events all of which aid relentlessly to the portrayal of the protagonists’ femininity. It has been argued that the three novels at hand endeavour to foster non conformist and powerful women who dare to challenge and transgress the sacred (religious and social norms) in order to subvert the prevailing patriarchal and heterosexual discourses. Using different portraits like lesbian, androgynous, and sexually empowered women, Winterson depicts strong willed protagonists who not only deconstruct the binary opposition system between man and woman, but also reconstruct a new paradigm of femininity and sexuality. Indeed, this depiction takes up the Butlerian strategy (Judith Butler) that ‘gender is always becoming rather than being’. On the whole, this Wintersonian portrayal which is crafted by postmodern techniques is in fact a revolt against all kinds of women suppression, and an alternative way for Winterson to create the world she would want it to be.