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摘 要

本文从女性主义视角探讨珍妮特•温特森的小说《给樱桃以性别》中的英雄形象。温特森戏仿童话故事和希腊神话并把三个故事重组嵌套为一个故事，解构了经典故事中传统的英雄形象。随着男主人公约旦的成长、英雄观的改变，真正的英雄形象逐渐突显出来。温特森通过对英雄的解构与重构，颠覆了男权社会写作模式，颂扬女性特征，提倡对性别界限的模糊。到目前为止，尚无研究者从女性视角研究《给樱桃以性别》，因而本文的研究拓展了《给樱桃以性别》这部作品的研究维度。另外，那些在现代社会中迷失自我的人可从中得到启发：平凡的人在平凡的生活中也能活出精彩。

关键词：珍妮特•温特森；《给樱桃以性别》;女性主义；英雄主义

Content

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Jeanette Winterson and Her Works 1

1.2 Theoretical Basis and the Study Significance 2

2. Literature Review 3

3. Analysis of the Conception of Hero in the Text 4

3.1 Deconstruction of Heroes by Parody of Three Classical Tales 4

3.2 Reconstruction of Heroes Through Jordan’s Perspective 7

4. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

1.1 Jeanette Winterson and Her Works

Jeanette Winterson, an innovative and controversial writer, is famous for her breakthrough in lesbian feminist writings in the contemporary society. She is also favored for her poetic language, and ideas that combines science and metaphysics with myth and quest. It is the innovation in narrative techniques that wins her good reputation and awards. In addition, her special life experience contributes a lot to her distinctive writing style.

As we all know, Jeanette Winterson born in Manchester, England, was adopted by Pentecostal couples. There were only a few books in her house including the Bible and some books of religion. However, Jane Eyre was an exception. Her adoptive mother told her Jane’s story but falsified the ending—Jane married missionary Rivers and became a missionary too, which reflected her mother’s original intention—to bring her up for preach. It was the book that gave her courage to query authorities. It was unstable in school, but Winterson had got herself into a girls’ grammar school and then she entered Oxford University to study English. It was not an easy transition at all. Winterson fell in love with another girl and then left home at 16. While she took her A levels, she lived in a variety of places, supporting herself with part-time jobs. She even worked as a domestic in lunatic asylum once.

After graduation, she took odd jobs in the theatre and her first novel, Oranges Are not the Only Fruit, was published when she was 24, which helped her win the Whitbread Award for a First Novel. Passion appeared in 1987. At that time, she became a full-time writer. Over the next years, she published Sexing the Cherry in 1989, Written on the Body in 1992, Art and Lies in 1994, The Power Book in 1995, Light Housekeeping in 2004 and so on. Oranges Are not the Only Fruit and Sexing the Cherry are the companion volumes. Readers can find coherent thoughts in the former , but in the latter, unconventional thinking can be easily found. Meanwhile, the rebellious consciousness developed from a spark in Oranges Are not the Only Fruit to a sea of a fire in Sexing the Cherry.

Set in 17th century London, Sexing the Cherry is about the journeys of a mother, known as the Dog Woman and her adopted son, Jordan. The journey is in a space-time flux: across the seas and across time. The Dog Woman is somewhat grotesque. She is giant and hideous but her son feels pride of her. Over the journey, Jordan falls in love with Fortunata, a dancer who may not exist at all. In search for his lover, he goes across seas and time along with his idol, Tradescant, a botanist, explorer and traveler. On the way, he knows that Fortunata is the youngest one among the twelve princesses. The story is adapted from Shoes that Were Danced to Pieces , a classical fairy tale. Among these princesses, the fifth princess has the similar experiences with the witch in Rapunzel which is a new version rewritten by Winterson. In addition, the youngest princess tells Jordan a story of Artemis which is a parody of a Greek myth.

1.2 Theoretical Basis and the Study Significance

Feminist movement first became prominent during the French and American revolutions in the late eighteenth century. In Britain, the suffragette movement appeared in the late nineteenth century which resulted in a significant political change. International Dictionary of English with Chinese Translation defines “feminism” as “the belief that woman should be allowed the same right, power and chances as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state” (Paul, 2001: 770).

Feminist criticism is a core conception in feminism, appearing during the second wave of feminist movement in the sixties and seventies of the last century. Its appearance in academia owes to Elatine Showalter, an American feminist theorist, who firstly pointed out the conception and advocated to emphasize female experience and build a new critical paradigm independent of traditional models of critique. “Its subjects include the images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions of misconceptions about women in criticism, and the fissure in male-constructed literary history.” (Showalter, 2002: 465) Shulamit Reinharz, a feminist sociologist, holds the idea that “feminist is an analysis angle rather than a method” (Zheng Dandan, 2011: 23). “Feminism stresses the mode of critical reconstruction which focuses on females, that is, eliminating masculine prerogatives and class depression through re-interpreting traditional issues with gender identity.” (Zheng Dandan, 2011: 28) One essential step before reconstruction is deconstruction. Deconstruction is subversion of traditional ideology. Deconstructing a word, a sentence, or a conventional belief is to collapse its philosophical foundation through analysing the rhetoric in it.

When it comes to the hero, people may think of “superman” or “great personage” who devotes themselves to the lofty career with intense affection, firm will, persistent pursuit and excellent capability. The princes in fairy tales, heroes in Greek myths and knights in middle ages, for instance, are all qualified to be the so-called hero. The New Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary defines “hero” as “a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for their courage outstanding achievement, or noble qualities” (Pearsall and Hanks, 2007: 986). Heroism is considered as the basic quality of men, so Winterson tries to deconstruct traditionally heroic images with the aim to fight for female rights.

Sexing the Cherry is an experimental fiction with obvious postmodernist features: parody, non-liner, fragment, uncertainty, stream of consciousness and so on. It’s like a fruit salad with various elements. So it’s hard to master it overall. The thesis chooses the angle of the conception of hero to make an interpretation of the novel from feminist perspective. It is a theoretical innovation that no one has yet written it. In addition, it can teach us to live wonderfully and be the hero of ourselves in ordinary life.

2. Literature Review

Jeanette Winterson, a contemporary writer, is becoming increasingly famous. At present, she has her own official website which records almost all the important information about her. Her works have attracted much attention abroad, however, in domestic it is regretful that only a few researches have been made on her or her works.

After Winterson’s first book Oranges Are not the Only Fruit was published, she won her first reputation. Studies on her fictions abroad had gone deeply into many aspects, such as the postmodernism, deconstruction, non-linear narrative, fragment, lesbian, metafiction and so on.

In domestic, some scholars have paid attention to her works from these aspects. Postmodernism is the most distinct feature of her fictions. Gao Qun from Northeast Forestry University wrote a series of articles on the theme of postmodernism of Winterson’s novels. The multiple narrative structures were discussed in his researches, such as intertextuality and embedded narrative. In addition, Ding Dong, a scholar, made some researches on narrative characteristics of postmodernism. Lin Shaojing quested for Winterson’s inner world through making an analysis of Oranges Are not the Only Fruit, and Luo Wenlin studied this novel from the mixture of lesbian and postmodernism. What’s more, some researches on Light Housekeeping were done from archetypical images, stream of consciousness, and feminist perspective. Since Sexing the Cherry is newly translated into Chinese, few researches have been made on it. Zou Peng, the translator of the novel, wrote an essay of it from the angle of unrestricted time and space.

In short, although many studies have been made of her works, there seems to be no article mentioning heroism in women’s eyes. What’s more, studies on Sexing the Cherry are numbered. So it is necessary to spend time researching the heroism in this novel from feminist perspective.

3. Analysis of the Conception of Hero in the Text

3.1 Deconstruction of Heroes by Parody of Three Classical Tales

Through the intertexture of the three adapted tales, Winterson deconstructs traditional images of heroes which are listed in the following. The old soldier in Shoes that Were Danced to Pieces gains both fame and wealth; the prince wins his love in Rapunzel, and the Orion is a handsome celestial. The invariable ending of fairy tales is that the prince and the princess live happily ever after, because both the readers and the authors are used to seeing things from male perspective. So at that time, the so-called heroes are just an epitome of male-dominated society.

Parody is “one of the literary methods that of the most intention and analyticity” (Wang Xianpeiamp;Wang Youping, 1999: 212). Through destructive imitation, the weakness and pretension of the target can be exposed. Parody is a common narrative technique which exaggerates twists and mocks the contents and forms of classics with the purpose to criticize, satirize or deny the tradition and realistic value.

Every rewriting of classics reflects an aspect of reality. Using embedded narrative, Winterson retells many tales from feminist perspective. The main tale is a story of twelve dancing princesses and the stories of Rapunzel and Artemis are merged into the former. Through the parody of the classics, Winterson breaks up the form of masculine narrative in order to emphasize the description of women’s fate. The overturn of gender deconstructs conventional heroic images. For women, the classical endings that “the prince and the princess live a happy and content life” of fairy tales are somewhat ridiculous for the princess may be not happy and the prince may be not a hero.

The story of twelve dancing princesses is the parody of the Shoes that Were Danced to Pieces in Grimm’s Fairy Tales written by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm. The Grimm brothers tell a happy-ending story. However, Winterson reminds the readers that women, for whom the marriage may be a tragedy, are ignored in the tale.

In Grimm’s story, the eldest princess is stupid and stubborn while the youngest is alert and sensitive. When the old soldier comes, the youngest princess seems to be a prophet. She says that “I know not how it is, you are very happy, but I feel very strange; some misfortune is certainly about to befall us.” At this time, the eldest mocks her little sister instead of being alert—“you are a goose who are always frightened” (Grimm, 2012: 464). After that, the youngest also finds strange evidence twice but are ignored each time. It is obvious that the princesses especially the eldest leaves bad impressions on the readers. Therefore, the ending becomes reasonable. The arrogant eldest princess gets punishment to marry the old soldier and the brave and lucky soldier becomes a hero—marring a princess and getting a promise to be the next king. All things seem to go well because no matter writers or readers, men or women, all of them conventionally understand the story from the perspective of masculinism. In Sexing the Cherry, the princesses are independent, self-conscious and brave, especially the youngest. They fly through the window to a silver city to dance with the people there but not with the twelve princes as the Grimms said before. Winterson helps the princesses find their own values instead of relying on the daily date with princes. And the way they go out is changed. They fly into the sky like fairies rather than across an underground hole like mice. The images of princesses are promoted immediately. Finally, a prince finds their secret and he and his eleven brothers marry the twelve princesses. The author intensifies the tragedy to highlight women’s plight. The brave youngest princess escapes from the wedding. Her inner world is described as the following: “I look at my husband to be, the youngest prince, who had followed us in secret and found us out, and I did not want him” (Winterson, 1989: 284). She runs out of the church, leaving the crowds of guests behind. Daring to break conventional rules and challenge the authorities, she is given a great mission to show her self-consciousness. As to the other eleven princesses, the author emphasizes their life after marriage. Grimm’s Fairy Tales ended in the wedding but actually, it is just the beginning of life. “We had all, in one way or another, parted from the glorious princes and were living scattered, according to our tastes”, the eldest says. (Winterson, 1989: 138) The bloody ending is narrated by her simply. She elopes with a mermaid. The second kills her husband because her religious collections are ruined by him. The third pierces her husband and his beloved boy with a single arrow… The princes play the role of barriers. They disturb the princesses’ life, violate their privacy and ruin their happiness. Shiny images of princes are destroyed. By this time, the readers can treat them without bias: they should be regarded as a rat in the fields rather than a star in the sky.

Amid the story of twelve princesses, the other two stories are embedded: Rapunzel and the story of Artemis in Greek myths. Of course, it refers to new versions created by the author. The fate of the fifth princess is similar to the witch in the new Rapunzel. Rapunzel and the witch fall in love with each other but the prince throws the witch out of the tower and lives happily with Rapunzel. In this new version of Rapunzel, the prince plays an evil role instead of being hurt in Grimms’ story. The fifth princess is black and blue when she is found by her sisters.

The twelfth princess Fortunata tells a story to Jordan. It’s about a Greek goddess Artemis, Apollo’s sister. She goes armed with a bow and arrows and has the power both to send plagues and sudden death to mortals, and to heal them. She likes to chase like a man. In Greek myth, she loves Orion, the son of Neptune. “She is about to marry him.” However, it is opposed by Apollo. Artemis is cheated by his conspiracy and kills her lover by mistake. Orion has a heroic image in the myth.

He [is] a handsome giant and mighty hunter. His father [gives] him the power of wading through the depths of the sea, or as others say, of walking on its surface. (Tao Jie, 1989: 108)

In this fiction, Winterson adapts almost all the plots.

Artemis had envied men of their long-legged freedom to roam the world and return full of glory to wives who only waited. She knows about the heroes and the home-makers, the great division that made life possible, without rejecting it. She had simply hoped to take on the freedoms of the other side, but what if she travelled the world and the seven seas like a hero? (Winterson, 1989: 391)

She aspires to live like a man without the bondage of family and refuses just to wait. She doesn’t love Orion. He appears with “right eye patched and his left arm in a splint” (Winterson, 1989: 393). Using frolic words, Winterson tells readers that “he [is] after all, the result of three of the goals in a good mood pissing on an ox-hide” (Winterson, 1989: 394). Orion is a mighty hunter who makes Artemis frightened. He rapes her and falls asleep. Winterson exchanges their power. Artemis’s revenge is simple, killing him with a scorpion. The female is weak while the male is strong which is consistent with natural laws. However, she takes revenge successfully which shows her courage, independence, and feminine rebellious consciousness. Artemis is expected to take the initiative to fight for equality.

The three stories above are all parodies of classics. Traditional heroes such as the princes and the handsome gods seem black and evil. The protagonists turn from men to women. When women stand up to point out men’s guilt, readers find it an entirely different story. In order to safeguard the rights of women, Winterson breaks up the patriarchal ideology through deconstructing heroic images, and then, it is time to reconstruct a true hero .

3.2 Reconstruction of Heroes Through Jordan’s Perspective

Jordan is the first male protagonist in Winterson’s novel. The “male protagonist” can be replaced with “hero”. One of the meanings of hero in New Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary is “the chief male character in a book, play, or with whom the reader is expected to sympathize” (Pearsall and Hanks, 2007: 986). He has a heroic complex from his childhood. When he sees the first banana, his fate seems to be organized. The Dog Woman narrates the scene as:

He was standing with both his arms upraised and staring at the banana above Jordan’s head. I put my head next to his head and looked where he looked and I saw deep blue waters against a pale shore and trees whose branches song with green and birds in fairground colors and an old man in a loin-cloth. (Winterson, 1989: 28-29)

He is doomed to belong to the sea. He travels across sea with his idol, Tradescant. He is an actual historical figure in 17th century Britain. When virtual and real worlds are mixed together, the character in fiction seems to be more authentic. Tradescant is a hero in Jordan’s eyes. His experiences of navigation emerge with Jordan’s growth together and it is hard to separate them into parts. Tradescant teaches Jordan how to build the boat and how to sail. He is worthy to receive worship in Jodan’s opinion. International Dictionary of English with Chinese Translation defines “hero worship” as “a feeling of extreme admiration for someone, imaging that they have qualities or abilities that are better than anyone else’s” (Pearsall and Hanks, 2007: 986).

For Tradescant, it is natural to be a hero. His father is a hero before him. He knows what to look for and the journeys he makes can be tracked on any map. When learning the art of grafting the first time, Jordan wonders whether it is an art he can apply to himself. Having some of Tradescant grafted onto him so that he can be a hero like him. And he will flourish in any climate, pack his ships with rarities and be welcomed with full honors.

In conventional thoughts, indeed, Tradescant is a hero. However, in Winterson’s writing, when Dog Woman narrates, everything becomes comical. “…poor John Tradescant [is] swinging my arm like a little monkey, begging me to stop” (Winterson, 1989: 76-77). “Tradescant says nothing but [tries] to take my bundle, which immediately [flattens] him to the ground” (Winterson, 1989: 81-82). It is obvious that, in Dog Woman’s eyes, he is as average as others.

After reaching different places, meeting with various people and living in diverse environment, Jordan changes a lot. When he was a child, his neighbour predicted his future, which gives readers a hint of plots.

He’ll make you love him and he’ll break your heart. There’re many will want this heart but none will have it. None save one and she will spurn it. (Winterson, 1989: 31-32)

Jordan doesn’t belong to one place. He begins his journey to Barbados with Tradescant just as his mother says: “[he] came from the water, and I [know] the water will claim him again” (Winterson, 1989: 246). After travelling around the world and even being welcomed by the king, he wins the honor to be treated as a hero. His mother meets him as a hero’s mother on the shore several days before his arrival. However, is he a hero?

He starts his journey in search for a dancer Fortunata, the twelfth princess, though even doesn’t know whether she exists in the world. At first, Jordan considers the hero as a man who puts women and love aside, just like Tradescant.

I want to be brave, and admired and have a beautiful wife and a fine house. I want to be a hero and wave goodbye to my wife and children at the docks, and be sorry to see them do but more excited about what is to come. (Winterson, 1989: 304)

From his point of view, women are the tools to realize his vanity. However, he falls in love with a woman and “[uses] her body as a marker” (Winterson, 1989: 312). Not coming to pass his original expectation, he doesn’t become the hero as he defined before——a career man without women and love. Nevertheless, Jordan’ opinion on it has changed along with the Journey. Originally, his view on hero is macho.

If you’re a hero, you can be an idiot, behave badly, ruin your personal life, have any number of mistresses and talk about yourself at all the time, and nobody minds. Heroes are immune. They have wide shoulders and plenty of hair and wherever they go, a crowd gathers. Mostly, they enjoy the company of other men, although attractive women are part of their reward. (Winterson, 1989: 348)

He regards women as accessories of his life and the waiters at the dock. Later, in search for the dancer, he reaches different places: cafes, casinos and whorehouse. And at the whorehouse, he dresses himself as a woman so that he can be admitted into it. After this experience, he decides to continue to be a woman for a time and takes a job on a fish stall. It is at that place that he discovers that women are of wisdom while men are silly.

[He] [watches] women flirting with men, pleasing men, doing business with men, and then he [watches] them collapsing into laughter, sharing the joke, while the men, all unknowing, [feel] themselves master of the situation and [go] off to brag in barrooms and to preach from pulpits the folly of the weaker sex. (Winterson, 1989: 89).

His prejudice on women is overthrown. The conspiracy of women shocks him and he thinks highly of women. When he is given a book on men written by a woman, he is upset because he has to admit that men are really the weaker ones.

Travelling through time, in 1990, the Modern Jordan also has a heroic complex. He loves navigation, collects heroic deeds and has a secret lover who always waits at the docks and cannot wait to marry him when he comes home as a hero. His father watches space films.

The women in the films are sometimes scientists rather than singers or waitress. Sometimes the women get to be heroes too, though this is still not as popular. (Winterson, 1989: 355-356)

It demonstrates that women play more important roles in modern society. Living in this environment, modern Jordan is influenced gradually.

As to the Modern Dog Woman, she is a chemist who carries on the characteristics of Dog Woman. Dropping a decent job and comfortable life, she becomes an environmental guardian and a peace maker, defying person in power to safeguard the interests of the public. But she is not understood and accepted by them. Does she give up? No. Combat is going on while life is continuing. She doesn’t hate men. She just hopes that they can try harder. They all want to be heroes but all women’s hope is to let them stay at home and help with the housework and the kids. The contradiction between men and women is ubiquitous. However, on this matter, it can reach an agreement between the Modern Dog Woman and the Modern Jordan. She is scorned by all except him. He considers her as a hero.

Surely this woman was a hero. Heroes give up what’s comfortable in order to protect what they believe in or live dangerously for the common good. She was doing that, so why she being persecuted? (Winterson, 1989: 415)

It is also the true hero in Winterson’s eyes. Jordan finds his lost ego while modern Jordan finds a true hero. Then, Jordan can live completely. Journey is keeping on and life is filled with hope.

4. Conclusion

As a female writer, Winterson observes the world through her eyes and talks about life from her perspective. Sexing the Cherry is a story about men and women, journey and dream, searching and chasing.

The thesis, analysing heroic images of the novel from feminist perspective, is divided into two parts. Firstly, it talks about the heroes of classics. Through the parody, Winterson mocks heroes written in the perspective of masculism and rewrites some fairy tales and myths to deconstruct traditional heroes. Secondly, it describes heroes from Jordan’s perspective. Jordan has a heroic complex. So he worships heroes like Tradescant and wants to be his successor. However, his expectations are not met for he cannot ignore female or desert love. Along with the continuation of his journey, his standpoint of hero is changing. He likes women and appreciates them. Meanwhile, men seem to be the weaker ones sometimes. Finally, he realizes that the Modern Dog Woman is a true hero. Till now, Winterson has completed the reconstruction of heroic images. And a self-giving and brave woman appears in the sight of readers.

Based on the analyses above, it can be noticed that Winterson is a feminist who fights to be free from the burdens of her gender, just as the title of the fiction, Sexing the Cherry, tells us that cherry has no gender. So try to ignore the gender. The literature in the past is governed by male, therefore almost all writers and readers read works from the angle of masculism. From another perspective, heroes in classics may be not heroes and women can be heroes instead of waiters. For no one has studied Sexing the Cherry from the feminism perspective, the thesis opens a new world for the research of the novel. In addition, the people who get lost in modern society can be enlightened that ordinary people can live its best in the ordinary life.

Works Cited

[1]Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Beijing: Central Edition and Translation Publishing House, 2012.

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