Feminist Criticism in Jeanette Winterson’s “Sexing the Cherry”
Asist. drd. Giulia SUCIU
Universitatea din Oradea
The paper focuses on the way in which Jeanette Winterson deconstructs any gender
expectations the reader may have regarding her female characters in “Sexing the Cherry”. Aware
of the way women have been depicted in literature throughout the centuries, Winterson presents us
with the ‘antidote’.
Feminist Literary Criticism
According to “The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms”(1998), feminist
criticism became a dominant force in Western literary studies in the late 1970s, when feminist
theory more broadly conceived was applied to linguistic and literary matters. Since the early 1980s,
feminist literary criticism has developed and diversified in a number of ways and is now
characterized by a global perspective.
French feminist criticism garnered much of its inspiration from Simone de Beauvoir’s
seminal book, Lé Deuxiéme Sexe (1949; The Second Sex). Beauvoir argued that associating men
with humanity more generally (as many cultures do) relegates women to an inferior position in
society. Subsequent French feminist critics writing during the 1970s acknowledged Beauvoir’s
critique but focused on language as a tool of male domination, analysing the ways in which it
represents the world from the male point of view and arguing for the development of a feminine
language and writing.
Although interested in the subject of feminine language and writing, North American
feminist critics of the 1970s and early 1980s began by analysing literary texts—not by abstractly
discussing language—via close textual reading and historical scholarship. One group practiced
"feminist critique," examining how women characters are portrayed, exposing the patriarchal
ideology implicit in the so-called classics, and demonstrating that attitudes and traditions
reinforcing systematic masculine dominance are inscribed in the literary canon. Another group
practiced what came to be called "gynocriticism," studying writings by women and examining the
female literary tradition to find out how women writers across the ages have perceived themselves
and imagined reality.
While it gradually became customary to refer to an Anglo-American tradition of feminist
criticism, British feminist critics of the 1970s and early 1980s objected to the tendency of some
North American critics to find universal or "essential" feminine attributes, arguing that differences
of race, class, and culture gave rise to crucial differences among women across space and time.
British feminist critics regarded their own critical practice as more political than that of North
American feminists, emphasizing an engagement with historical process in order to promote social
change.
By the early 1990s, the French, American, and British approaches had so thoroughly
critiqued, influenced, and assimilated one another that nationality no longer automatically signalled
a practitioner’s approach. Today’s critics seldom focus on "woman" as a relatively monolithic
category; rather, they view "women" as members of different societies with different concerns.
Feminists of colour, Third World (preferably called postcolonial) feminists, and lesbian feminists
have stressed that women are not defined solely by the fact that they are female; other attributes
(such as religion, class, and sexual orientation) are also important, making the problems and goals
of one group of women different from those of another.
Many commentators have argued that feminist criticism is by definition gender criticism
because of its focus on the feminine gender. One of the central assumptions of feminism is that
gender and sex are different. Gender is socially constructed. The differences between men and
women are not so much biological as social. Sex is biological (male/female), gender is cultural
(masculine/feminine). But the relationship between feminist and gender criticism is, in fact,
complex; the two approaches are certainly not polar opposites but, rather, exist along a continuum
of attitudes toward sex, sexuality, gender, and language.
Jeanette Winterson – “Sexing the Cherry”
One of the most original voices in British fiction to emerge during the 1980s, Jeanette
Winterson was named as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Writers' in a promotion run jointly
between the literary magazine Granta and the Book Marketing Council. “Like Scheherazade, Ms.
Winterson possesses an ability to dazzle the reader by creating wondrous worlds in which the usual
laws of plausibility are suspended. She possesses the ability to combine the biting satire of Swift
with the ethereal magic of Garcia Marquez, the ability to reinvent old myths even as she creates
new ones of her own." - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review 27/4/1990. The
novel” Sexing the Cherry”, (1989, winner of the E.M.Forster Award) flirts with fantasy, matches
fairy tales and labyrinthine cities against recognizable historical backgrounds, swims through what
has been variously called magic realism and historiographic metafiction.
“Sexing the Cherry” is set in the seventeenth century, around the beheading of Charles the
First. It is the story of Jordan, an orphan found floating on the river Thames, and his keeper, the
Dog Woman, a huge and monstrous creature. The story is told in alternating sections by Dog
Woman and Jordan. Jordan eventually leaves London to travel the world with a character named
Tradescant, one of the gardeners at the court of King Charles II. As Jordan and Tradescant travel,
Winterson explores the theme of time and time’s effect on love. She uses the plot to show that love
is timeless and actions are repeated over and over again. Winterson takes us on a journey with
Jordan, through time, through love, through fantasy, through fairy-tales and, at the end of the book,
we are in present-day London, again with the Dog Woman and Jordan, who is now a naval cadet
named Nicholas Jordan.
“Sexing the Cherry “ is first of all a grown-ups fairy tale: there are dancing princesses, a
giant woman, magic, towns dying of love. Winterson is a bohemian going against convention in
“Sexing the Cherry”. She challenges the idea of space and time, the norm of heterosexual love and
breaks gender expectations. Winterson similarly seeks to challenge conventional thinking, to
transgress gender boundaries; all her narrators are androgynous, usually involved in turbulent
lesbian love affairs.
According to Hester Eisenstein (1984), the behaviour that was thought to be appropriate for
the stereotypical woman was "passive or weak", "non-aggressive, and dependent" and, thus,
resulted in her being understood as "essentially incapable of a strong, independent and autonomous
existence." (Eisenstein 1984:59).
The Dog-Woman reduces this still widely valid formula of womanhood to absurd. By
challenging those concepts, Winterson plays with the fact that the general readership is familiar
with the idea that there exists something like appropriate looks and behaviour for women. DogWoman is presented as having features contrary to those of the stereotypical woman and simply as
not meeting any of the gender expectations. Let’s take for example her physical appearance.
“How hideous am I? My nose is flat, my eyebrows are heavy. I have only a few teeth and
those are a poor show, being black and broken. I had smallpox when I was a girl and the caves in
my face are home enough for fleas. But I have fine blue eyes that see in the dark.” (Winterson 1990:
24)
“I hate to wash, for it exposes the skin to contamination.” (Winterson 1990 : 35)
She can hold a dozen oranges in her mouth at once" (Winterson 1990 : 26), sweats "enough
liquid to fill a bucket" (Winterson 1990 : 21) and is strong enough to hold a man "from the ground
at arm’s length" (Winterson 1990: 28) by using only one hand.
As for her behaviour, she is brutal, capable of savage if bawdy acts of violence,
spectacularly against two Puritans found in a brothel.
“Then you can pay for it now,” said I, stepping down and swinging at him with my axe. I
missed on purpose, but it gave them a chance to see how sharp the thing was, as it sliced the bed in
half…Scroggs reached up to ring the bell, but I chopped the cord and one of his thumbs as he did
so…Firebrace tried to escape through the window, but I soon had his leg off and left him hopping
in circles and begging for mercy…Then, without more ado, because I am not a torturer, I took his
head off in one clean blow and kicked him off the block.” (Winterson 1990: 88)
Thus Winterson shatters any gender expectation the reader may have when reading the
novel. Her female characters are exactly the opposite of what is expected in a woman. While a
stereotypical woman is slender, curvy, passive, the Dog Woman is huge and monstrous and active.
Instead of solving her conflicts through communication, she solves them with violence. She is
totally unconcerned with her appearance. She is aware of what other people think of her but she
does not feel the need to act upon it, to do something to please. She is independent, unwilling to
submit herself to a man. Last but not least, the very essence of the female character is challenged in
the book: instead of giving birth like every other woman, she finds Jordan, her son, on the
riverbank.
Aware of the way women have been depicted in literature throughout the centuries,
Winterson presents us with the ‘antidote’. The Dog Woman is no longer the inferior, subordinate
woman. A loathing for subordination had led her to be overweight for as long as she had been living
with her parents:
“I wasn’t fat because I was greedy; I hardly ate at all. I was fat because I wanted to be
bigger than all the things that were bigger than me. All the things that had power over me. It was a
battle I intended to win. “(Winterson 1990 : 124)
Dog-Woman’s name is another break with gender conventions.
"I had a name but I have forgotten it. They call me Dog-Woman and it will do."
(Winterson1990 : 11)
One might argue that by accepting being called "Dog-Woman", firstly, she accepts a name
others have given to her and, thus, allows others to impose power on her. Toril Moi defines the act
of naming as "an act of power (that) reveals a desire to regulate and organize reality according to
well-defined categories" (Moi 1985:160) Secondly, and as a result of the first, she appears to agree
to being described as a "woman" also. The power aspect in the act of naming can hardly be denied.
But I would like to point out that in an English language environment women are usually referred to
with regard to their marital status. Dog-Woman’s name, however, implies that she is considered as
being self-sufficient as she is; she is neither somebody’s "better half" nor the "better half-to-be".
She does not need a husband or the prospect of one to justify her existence; she has two domains of
her own that characterise her well enough: being female and breeding dogs. To accept the "welldefined category" of "woman" as appropriate is in Dog-Woman’s case merely a sign that she
understands herself as being female. It does not mean that she accepts any commitments which the
gender category of "woman" accompanies. She is female but she is by no means feminine. Though
Dog-Woman apparently knows about them, she is not prepared to come up to any gender
expectations. By seemingly ignoring what framework of adequate behavioural patterns the
patriarchal society has allocated to women, Dog-Woman lives outside those gender boundaries.
Her second break with gender expectations is her hugeness. Throughout the narrative, DogWoman’s gigantic female body is related to the reader. All her features are ultimately female but
extremely over-sized. For instance she is attributed with a pair of breasts between which she tries to
choke men on several occasions. What is traditionally considered to exist only for pleasuring men
or to be connected to childbearing and nursing offspring turns into a weapon and into a source for
making men feel inadequately equipped.
Winterson made of the Dog Woman what every woman would like to be ( evidently on a
smaller scale) : independent, confident, capable of having her own opinions and to make herself be
heard etc. There simply is nothing to pity Dog-Woman for: That she is gigantic helps her to get
heard, to be taken seriously, be it only for fear. That she is not concerned about being dirty proves
her confidence. That she lives on her own by the river shows her independence.
She is capable of having powerful points of view that she is not afraid to acknowledge and
to defend if necessary. She likes to argue “ I like a fight myself and I enjoy baiting Neighbour
Firebrace…with everyone in accord, what merriment is there?”(Winterson 1990: 63), to state her
point of view and her loyalty to God and the King. She does not accept any authority except the
King and God. She hates the Puritans for misinterpreting the words of God, for overthrowing and
beheading the king and for being outrageously hypocritical.
But in spite of all these characteristics which challenge gender expectations, one could still
find some traits that define the Dog-Woman as being a sensitive, love-longing person. On the first
hand it’s her motherly love for Jordan.
”Safe, sound and protected. That’s how I wanted Jordan to be. When he left me I was pound
and broken-hearted…” (Winterson 1990 : 83)
“When he fell asleep I crept across to cover him up with my blankets and I looked at the
length of him, his thin wrists and nose like a sharp slope. I stoke his hair and I realized his face was
scarred. No one would hurt him now.” (Winterson 1990 : 109)
On the second hand, she needs to be loved like every other person. Love it’s what defines
the Dog Woman as being a woman. According to Simone de Beauvoir ( The Second Sex), the word
“love” has different meanings for the two sexes. As Byron said, love is just an occupation for the
man, while for the woman, love it’s life itself. So, the Dog Woman’s desire to be loved is easily
understandable. But she is well aware that society only rewards those who conform to expectations.
"I am too huge for love. No one, male or female, has ever dared to approach me. They are
afraid to scale mountains." (Winterson 1990: 35).
Hence, she is ready to conform to expectations.
“I hate to wash, but knowing it to be a symptom of love I was not surprised to find myself
creeping towards the pump in the dead of the night like a ghoul to a tomb. I had determined to
cleanse all my clothes, my underclothes and myself…In this new state I presented myself to my
loved one.”(Winterson 1990 : 35-6)
But it was useless. All she could inspire was terror. Thus love remains for her "that cruelty
which takes us to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever."
(Winterson1990:35)
The fact that Winterson’s character defies gender expectations is also obvious in the
language that the Dog Woman uses. It is a rough, incorrect language (due to her lack of education
“I have only a little learning” (Winterson1990:26, “Touch me you won’t” Winterson1990 :25)),
not lady-like, ( “I could scarcely step outside without sweating off me enough liquid to fill a
bucket” (Winterson1990 : 21). She talks about things which don’t usually belong to a woman’s
sphere of topics. “As far as I know,… the King had been forced to call a Parliament to grant him
money for his war against the kilted beasts and their savage ways…The King, turning to his own
people, found himself with a Parliament full of Puritans who wouldn’t grant him money until he had
granted them reform” (Winterson 1990 : 26)
There are no hedge-phrases in her language, no tag-questions, no heavily modified nouns,
no modals, no indirect commands, nothing to suggest an unconfident speaker. Her way of speaking
is rather competitive than cooperative; she knows what she wants, she has her own opinions which
she is ready to defend tooth and nail.
Mention has to be made about the stories of the twelve princesses. The reconstruction of the
story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses offers a feminist perspective in reading the novel. Thus,
Winterson empowers the princesses to choose their own fates and change their predetermined
heterosexual endings. Each princess disposed of the husband she was forced to marry out of one
reason or another. The first princess killed her husband because he tried to stop her hobby of
collecting religious items. “She had not minded her husband much more than any wife does until he
had tried to stop her hobby.” (Winterson1990 : 49) The second princess found out that her husband
was a homosexual so she pierced him and his lover with a single arrow. The third princess really
wanted her marriage to work „I wanted to love him, I was determined to be happy with
him”(Winterson1990: 51), but her husband was a womaniser and the aim of his love affairs was to
hurt his wife. Another princess was a lesbian, another one married a masochist, the youngest
princess ran away from her wedding. Men are no longer the final destination of women’s romance.
Women can either be independent or seek the same sex for love. Thus, Winterson reverses the
traditional concept that women rather sacrifice their goals and plans in order to turn themselves into
a promising lover, whom men want to settle down with.
The other female character in the novel has no name, she’s the environmentalist. She is
another powerful woman, defying gender expectations and fighting for her convictions.
“That’s how it started, the mercury…checking mercury levels in rivers and lakes and
streams…The levels were always too high, the fish were dying, children had strange scaly diseases
which the government said had no connection with anything whatsoever. I started one-woman
campaign, the sort you read about in the papers where the woman is thought to be a bit loopy but
harmless enough. They hope you’ll go away..I didn’t go away. I wrote articles and pushed fact
sheets through front doors.”(Winterson 1990 : 122)
She is no longer the innocent, narrow-minded housewife (as female characters are usually
depicted), but a strong-willed woman, who sees through this hypocritical world and can’t take it
anymore. “ The truth is I lost patience with this hypocritical stinking world…I can’t flatter, lie,
cajole, or even smile very much. What is there to smile about?” (Winterson 1990 : 127) The world
needs to be changed. The existing order and norms do not please her anymore. Men are no more to
her liking because they all want to become heroes. “I don’t hate men, I just wish they’d try harder.
They all want to be heroes and all we want for them is to stay at home and help us with the
housework and the kids. That’s not the kind of heroism they enjoy.” (Winterson 1990 : 127) This
says all about the existing norms and expectations in the society. And the environmentalist woman
would like to do something to change the existing order. “I force all the fat ones to go on a diet and
all the men line up for compulsory training in feminism and ecology.” (Winterson 1990: 123) And
she does make a difference. Things are already beginning to change. “…space films. They’re happy
and they have women in them who are sometimes scientists rather than singers or waitresses.
Sometimes the women get to be heroes too, though this is still not as popular” (Winterson 1990 :
120)
“In Sexing the Cherry the female stands by itself as a positive, assertive and powerful
entity.” (Gonzáles 1996: 285) The two female protagonists in Sexing the Cherry represent
themselves as strong women who defy gender norms and expectations. What Gonzáles says about
Dog-Woman also applies to the environmentalist: "It is precisely, in her rebellion against this
social and cultural imposition of "femininity" that we recognize her as a woman." (Gonzáles 1996 :
285). The way in which the female protagonists present themselves from a first person narrator
perspective can be understood as a criticism to the existing patriarchal structures. The female
protagonists live their lives on their own terms and have to accept the drawbacks that come with
such attempts to challenge social structures.
All the male characters present in the novel are mere caricatures : weak, small, victims of
their vices (Preacher Scroggs and Neighbour Firebrace), the preacher giving passes for the king’s
trial was in fact a womaniser. Jordan is nothing you would expect in a man. He is gentle, romantic
(he took the Dog Woman to admire the sun rising over the water), several times in the novel he
keeps talking about love, he admits his fear of confined places, something a man would never do,
uses hedges in his speech ( I think, I don’t know, as though etc), modals, questions etc. His ideal is
a very common one “ I want to be brave and admired and have a beautiful wife and a fine horse. I
want to be a hero…I want to be like other men.” (Winterson1990 : 101) All he wants to do is
conform to the norm, be like other men.
Winterson has really succeeded to challenge conventional thinking and transgress gender
boundaries. Her female characters are strong-willed, independent women who have a thing to say
and are willing to change the world. Men, on the other hand are but caricatures, weak, unconfident,
trapped in their vices and dreams of becoming heroes.
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