Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 1
1.1. METHODOLOGY - STRUCTURING THE SUBJECT ................................................................. 4
2. CONNECTING TEXTS ...................................................................................................... 5
2.1. INTERTEXTUALITY: STRUCTURALIST ORIGIN VS. POSTMODERN BROADENING ................. 5
2.2. SEPARATING PASTICHE FROM SATIRICAL PARODY ........................................................... 7
2.3. PARATEXT AND ALLUSION: INDICATORS OF INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCING ................... 10
2.4. DEPLOYMENT OF TERMS................................................................................................. 11
3. WOOLF’S PROJECT........................................................................................................ 12
4. FACT AND FICTION IN THE PASSION – PASTICHING WOOLF’S EXPRESSIVE
AND THEMATIC STYLE .................................................................................................... 18
4.1. PASTICHING A BROADENING PERSPECTIVE OF NARRATIVE ............................................ 19
4.2. PASTICHING A BROADENING PERSPECTIVE OF PLOT ....................................................... 24
4.2.1. Fact, Fiction and Feeling – A Comparison to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway ................. 25
4.2.2. History and Fantasy – Comparison to Woolf’s Orlando – A Biography ............... 31
4.2.3. Poetry – Pastiching a Poetic Plot and Expression ................................................. 37
4.2.4. In Sum ..................................................................................................................... 42
4.3. PASTICHING WOOLF’S THEMATIC STYLE ....................................................................... 45
4.3.1. The Allusion to Cross-Dressing.............................................................................. 45
4.3.2. Pastiching the Theme of Marriage ......................................................................... 47
4.3.3. Pastiching the Theme of Time ................................................................................ 48
5. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 51
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 58
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ 62
Master’s Thesis
August 2008
Maj-Britt Boll Jensen
Aalborg University
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1. INTRODUCTION
“Judge the work not the writer” (Winterson 1996a: 192). Thus sounds the claim from British
author Jeanette Winterson, and this is just one of many factors drawing attention to her work
and, despite the claim, her persona. When regarding her oeuvre, this initial statement suggests
that one should preferably disregard Winterson’s personal factors, which include age, class,
gender, sexuality, marital status and religion. Nonetheless, I mention a few here – not for the
purpose of judging, but introducing. Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester in 1959,
given up for adoption and raised in Accrington by strict Evangelist parents. Though they
hindered Winterson in her passion for reading, she has worked with reading and writing ever
since finishing her English studies at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. She is a homosexual,
has never married, and there is no denying that Winterson’s work touches upon lesbianism
and gender stereotypes and makes use of postmodern traits such as intertextuality and genre
mixing. Adding her claim that “[…] the book, itself, will prove more than its writer” (ibid:
160), that is, possibly expressing more than the author intended or was conscious about, these
factors invite and partly explain the repeated use of the theoretical approaches of lesbianism,
feminism and postmodernism to Winterson’s work. These approaches have resulted in a wide
range of themes and criticisms.
Winterson’s portrayal of gender is by some feminist readers thought to be a political
betrayal, since the genders are displayed as equal rather than reversing the hierarchy, placing
women over men (Pearce 1994: 173). Also, her alleged disruption of gender stereotypes is by
some meant to rely on those stereotypes itself (Andermahr 2007: 39). For instance, critics
Helena Grice and Tim Woods claim that Winterson connects men with science and women
with fertility and fantasy, while critic Gregory J. Rubinson believes that Winterson does not
fall prey to such stereotypical perceptions (Rubinson 2005: 145). Instead, he believes
Winterson to base her writing on a feminist agenda, for instance in her mixing of genres (ibid:
24). One of the genres identified in her work is the lesbian romance, which Sonya Andermahr
sees both as being deconstructed and as a means to create a new language of sexual love
(Andermahr 2007: 93, 97), while Lynne Pearce believes Winterson to be a representative of
the popular face of lesbian fiction in Britain (Raitt 1995: 147). This new language is however
also criticised for killing romance through its literal descriptions of the sexual body (Grice
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Aalborg University
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and Woods 1998:36). Likewise, Winterson’s perception of realism has been widely discussed.
Some find her to have misinterpreted realism when she labels it simple and dead (Rubinson
2005:12f), while others believe her to succeed in puncturing the realist narrative (Andermahr
2007: 88).
The list of critique and admiration is long, and the above are just a few examples
indicating how it is practically impossible for critics to label Winterson as a traditional lesbian
or feminist writer. Therefore, I attempt to avoid such labelling and rather explore further the
fact that Winterson admires modernist writers and pays tribute to them in her own writing –
contrary to the above, this is something most critics agree upon. Great modernist writers such
as Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot and James Joyce are remembered for ‘making it new’; for going
against the literary canon in terms of thematic and linguistic choices. According to Winterson,
this is her project as well. As she writes in Art Objects; “[a] writer must resist the pressure of
old formulae and work towards new combinations of language” (1996a: 76). This connection
to modernism has, like the criticism above, not gone by unnoticed. Lyn Pykett labels her a
‘post-Modernist’ rather than a postmodernist, as she finds it important to focus on
Winterson’s traces back to modernism and her continuation of the modernist project (Grice
and Woods 1998: 6). These traces from modernism have been identified as for instance a new
way with words (ibid: 60) and as blurring the boundary between prose and poetry (Onega
2006: 11). They have also led to a critique of some of Winterson’s work for being secondhand, copying routine modernist opinions (ibid: 131). Although new is always in opposition
to old, I find it interesting how Winterson ‘makes it new’ and “resist[s] the pressure of old
formulae” while returning to modernist writers – in particular to Virginia Woolf. This raises
the question of why Winterson looks to the past – to modernism and Woolf – to renew her
present.
Though the connection to modernism is widely agreed upon among scholars, what
distinguishes my thesis is the specific focus I place and keep on Virginia Woolf. Winterson is
known as and claims to be a big fan and follower of Woolf. She compares Woolf work to that
of Mozart, Cézanne and Dickens and states; “[w]hen I read Virginia Woolf she is to my spirit,
waterfall and wine” (Winterson 1996a: 65). A possible answer to the question above is that
the Woolfian writing project encompasses ideas that inspire Winterson and help her reach the
goals of her own writing project.
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Aalborg University
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At first glance, their writing styles appear remarkably different. However, prior treatments
of this particular relation have found that Winterson in fact uses writing techniques similar to
Woolf’s and that they have the emancipation of a ‘woman’s sentence’ as a common goal
(Rusk 2002: 70f). Furthermore, Susana Onega points out that Winterson has turned out as the
kind of woman writer Woolf predicted would appear; “[…] a new novelistic form created by
women with the intellectual and material freedom to express their own sensibility and
worldview” (Onega 2006: 13). These comments are however made rather superficially and, in
my opinion, lack textual examples to document the relation. Moreover, they particularly lack
a focus on influence, rather than just similarity. Hence, this thesis is an investigation of
exactly how Winterson’s fascination with Woolf is detectable in and fruitful to her work.
An example of Woolf’s influence on Winterson is seen in a ‘paratext’ which according to
French literary theorist Gérard Genette is a title, a subtitle, a preface, etc. (Genette 1997: 3). It
is what connects the naked text to the outside, the ‘threshold’ which readers can cross or turn
away from (Genette and Maclean 1991: 261). Therefore, it is also of great importance to the
expectation, reception and perception of the text - a contract between the text and the reader
(Genette 1997: 3). The title of the last chapter in Winterson’s Art Objects (1995), “A Work of
My Own” (Winterson 1996a: 165), is a paratext imitating the title of Woolf’s famous essay A
Room of One’s Own (1929). The titles have the same beginning, middle and end – only two
words have been replaced by Winterson. I find these paratexts to be very meaningful and
indicative of the authors’ relation.
The styles of the two works in question are similar; essays about writing, women writing
and themselves writing. Furthermore, Woolf’s title represents the condition necessary for a
woman to write, i.e. a room of one’s own in both a physical and metaphorical sense, which
women widely lacked in her time, and therefore she regretted the lack of possible progress
within women’s writing (Woolf 1993b). Winterson honours this advocation from Woolf when
she shows through her title such progress by not only having achieved a room of her own, but
a whole work of her own. As if a personal goal for Winterson, she shows how the
preconditions set by Woolf have been met, pinpointing that women have achieved to produce
and publish writing, but she also renews Woolf’s essay by advocating for new aspects in
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Aalborg University
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writing generated by spirit (Winterson 1996a: 172f), the same generator posed by Woolf
(Woolf 1925: 150).
This is just one example of Woolf’s influence on Winterson and the latter’s treatment of
that influence. I investigate such issues further in this thesis, which I base on the following
question:
Focusing on the two writers’ ways of ‘making it new’, how does Jeanette Winterson’s
fascination with Virginia Woolf reveal itself in and contribute to her work?
1.1. Methodology - Structuring the Subject
In attempt to answer the question above, the rest of this thesis is divided into four chapters.
First and foremost, in order to investigate the impact of one writer upon another, it is
necessary to assemble an intertextual apparatus. Therefore, the overall term ‘intertextuality’ is
discussed in chapter two along with the related and more specific terms ‘pastiche’, ‘paratext’
and ‘allusion’. For this discussion, I rely mainly on the definitions and opinions of Fredric
Jameson, Ingeborg Hoesterey, Linda Hutcheon and Gérard Genette – some of the mainstream
literary theorists within this field, dealing with intertextual relations and delivering criticism
of each other’s contemplations. This enables me to consider different opinions of the
intertextual terms and condense these to definitions best suited for my investigation of
Winterson’s integration of Woolf’s work in her own.
Chapter three is an introduction to Virginia Woolf’s project. Such introduction is
necessary in order to answer - and understand the answer to - the question of this thesis. It is
mainly based on her novels Orlando – A Biography (1928), which I generally refer to as
simply Orlando, Mrs Dalloway (1925) and her essays Modern Fiction (1925), A Room of
One’s Own (1929) and Women and Fiction (1929). This way, both Woolf’s fiction and nonfiction are considered in and contribute to the outlining of her project, which is supplemented
by overall considerations of primarily Jane Goldman in The Cambridge Introduction to
Virginia Woolf (2006). This choice of material and outline is explained further in the
beginning of chapter three.
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Aalborg University
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The main body of this thesis is chapter four. While leaning on the intertextual terminology
and the outline of Woolf’s project, Winterson’s The Passion (1987) primarily and examples
from some of her other works secondarily comprise the analytical material investigated in
order to expound Woolf’s influence on Winterson’s writing. Firstly, I analyse Winterson’s
expressive and then her thematic style in a comparative analysis to Woolf’s style and project.
As in chapter three, further considerations concerning this chapter are presented at its
beginning.
The thesis is rounded off with chapter five in which the findings of the thesis are
recapped, considered and contextualised.
2. Connecting Texts
In this chapter, I present the theories and terms necessary for my analysis of the relation
between Woolf and Winterson and their work, which is executed in chapter four. Firstly, the
term ‘intertextuality’ is discussed since this is the term generally covering any kind of
reference between works. Secondly, the more specific terms ‘pastiche’, ‘paratext’ and
‘allusion’ are explored and discussed in their various forms in order to narrow down
definitions to those most profitable for my investigation of Woolf’s influence on Winterson’s
oeuvre.
2.1. Intertextuality: Structuralist Origin vs. Postmodern Broadening
When dealing with one author’s work in relation to and specifically integrated into another’s,
as in the case with Woolf and Winterson, the first term that comes to mind is ‘intertextuality’.
The term was initially developed and introduced by Julia Kristeva. Subsequently,
intertextuality has been assigned a number of different meanings. In an introduction to
Kristeva’s Desire in Language from 1980, Leon S. Roudiez defines ‘intertextuality’ with
reference to the, in his opinion, many misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the term:
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Aalborg University
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The concept […] has been generally misunderstood. It has nothing to do with
matters of influence by one writer upon another, or with the sources of a literary
work; it does, on the other hand, involve the components of a textual system such
as the novel, for instance. It is defined […] as the transposition of one or more
systems of signs into another, accompanied by a new articulation of the
enunciative and denotative position.
(Roudiez in Kristeva 1980: 15, original emphasis)
Hence, Roudiez here denies that the function of intertextuality deals with influences between
authors – the very function I am looking into. Instead, the original definition deals with the
production of literary texts as new combinations of existing sign systems and their objective
and expressive functions. It identifies a recycling yet altering deployment of textual systems
such as genres, and as an example he mentions the novel: the textual system, the conventional
signs determining the genre of a novel, has been intertextually reused and reinvented, thus
developing the genre. Roudiez’ preoccupation with Kristeva and this very narrow definition
of intertextuality is explainable, considering his structuralist background. Though born in
America, he was raised in France and Germany and translated many works of French
structuralist and poststructuralist critics into English and also co-wrote articles with for
instance Kristeva herself. Thus, he adopted their explicit focus on the importance of structure,
signs and codes in texts as well as their decentring of author and reader. However, later
definitions of intertextuality do include author and reader: “The current term intertextuality
includes literary echoes and allusions as one of the many ways in which any text is
interwoven with other texts” (Abrams 2005: 11, original emphasis). This quotation indicates a
wide range of intertextual possibilities stretching beyond the textual sign system. For instance,
‘allusion’, which I define later in this chapter, includes referencing to persons, places and
earlier literary passages (ibid: 10). Aside from in allusions, such intertextual referencing is
visible in quotations (direct or indirect), imitations, parodies and so forth of one author’s work
in another’s – exactly what Roudiez criticises.
The above definitions and the constant development of theoretical terms reflect the
difficulty of presenting an unequivocal definition of intertextuality. Nonetheless, it is a central
term in postmodern literature and useful to my analysis. The original definition is relevant
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Aalborg University
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when dealing with both Woolf’s and Winterson’s preoccupation with ‘making it new’, since
‘it’ includes the novel genre – a textual system. Furthermore, to detect Woolf’s influence on
Winterson and her writing beyond the level of sign systems, the wider definition of
intertextuality is needed, which encompasses the more precise – though still discussed and
varying – terms, ‘pastiche’, ‘paratext’ and ‘allusion’.
2.2. Separating Pastiche from Satirical Parody
The term ‘pastiche’ has also been defined in various ways, and though it appeared as far back
as in the seventeenth century, it is perceived as a subcategory of intertextuality. The majority
of scholars do not avoid the perhaps more widely known term ‘parody’ when defining
‘pastiche’. This is also the case for Fredric Jameson, who states:
Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style,
the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral
practice of such mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives, amputated of
the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the
abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic
normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs
(Jameson 1991: 17)
Here, Jameson claims that the version of pastiche present in postmodernism is dead – it is
static and blind. His definition is made in very negatively loaded words, such as “amputated”,
“devoid”, “blank”, “blind” and indirectly ‘unhealthy’ – and finished by a metaphor which
leaves an extremely dreary impression of pastiche. Jameson is of a Marxist tradition which
might explain his disapproval of pastiche compared to parody; a literary work should not only
reflect the state of social and political ideologies, but also expose its flaws through its
unconscious contents. It is for instance through this, the texts ‘unspoken’, that Jameson argues
“[…] for the power of literary culture to intervene in and transform existing economic and
political arrangements and activities” (Abrams 2005: 159). ‘Parody’s ulterior motives’ are
examples of such unconscious contents of a text, and these are what Jameson claims pastiche
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Aalborg University
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to lack. In the quotation, Jameson makes it clear that he does not believe pastiche to be a type
of reference contributing to the understanding or development of societal ideologies, and he
therefore denies it any contributing qualities at all. This leaves the question of the possible
purpose of pastiche. With no ulterior motives, satirical values, humour, irony, respect, honour,
praise, tribute or the like, what does pastiche provide for the reader?
Perhaps this is the reason for the disagreement from, for instance, Ingeborg Hoesterey,
who opposes Jameson’s definition (Hoesterey 1999: 86). Instead, she claims that pastiche is
an imitation of an admired author or great poet with the purpose of paying homage; that it has
gained status, cultural relevance (ibid: 78ff) and has been reborn in the spirit of
postmodernism (Hoesterey 2001: ix). She divides postmodern pastiche into two categories:
homage and cento pastiche, which both deal with the appropriation of the work of a generally
admired author by a later writer (ibid: 80f). Cento pastiche is also called ‘patchwork’ since it
is constituted as a collage of earlier works. Winterson does not deploy this category, as she
aims to develop her own style and resents copying (Winterson 1996a: 182); thus, my focus is
on homage pastiche. Hoesterey sets homage pastiche in comparison with parody as well, by
stating that negative homage is often seen associated with aspects of satire and parody (ibid:
86). Other characteristics of pastiche are imitation and dialogical engagement (ibid: 95).
Many of her opinions about pastiche are in agreement with Gérard Genette, whom I introduce
later, although she criticises him, among other things, for not directing attention to pastiche in
other art forms than literature. In this particular case, this lack of attention is acceptable, since
literature is the only art dealt with in this thesis.
Linda Hutcheon has worked extensively with postmodernism and the related terms parody
and irony. She too criticises Jameson’s negative expounding of both pastiche and parody and
claims herself grateful to Hoesterey for “[…] rescuing pastiche from its detractors, past and
present” (Hutcheon 2001: 326). However, she also criticises Hoesterey for not maintaining
her distinction between pastiche and parody in practise and for not being theoretical enough.
For instance, she finds that the great characteristics of a personal style assigned to pastiche are
valid for parody as well (ibid: 324). Hutcheon perceives pastiche to be monotextual, as
opposed to bitextual like parody, since it stresses similarity over difference (Hutcheon 2000:
33): “Parody is […] repetition with critical distance, which marks difference rather than
similarity” (ibid: 6), while “[…] pastiche operates more by similarity and correspondence”
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Aalborg University
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(ibid: 38). Furthermore, “[p]astiche will often be an imitation not of a single text […] but of
the indefinite possibilities of texts” (ibid). Since Winterson as mentioned resents copying, this
pastiche as correspondence and as imitation of the possibilities of texts, rather than of the
texts themselves, is very useful, since, as it will show; Winterson pastiches Woolf by
imitating the possibilities of her project. This definition by Hutcheon is very much in line with
the one by Gérard Genette.
As seen in the diagram below, Gérard Genette also places pastiche against parody. To specify
parody and its various modes, he introduces two other terms to adopt some of these modes.
(Genette 1997: 24)
Parody is the distortion of a text by means of minimal transformation; ‘travesty’ is stylistic
transformation with the function to debase; ‘caricature’ is satirical pastiche; and pastiche is
the imitation of a style without satirical intent (Genette 1997: 25). While pastiche is presented
by Genette as a more neutral term, it is not as neutral as suggested by Jameson. Genette
attaches to pastiche the qualities of being more technical (ibid: 24), free from direct quotations
(ibid: 78), playful and possibly serious (ibid: 28) and admiring or possibly mocking (ibid: 98).
As mentioned in the Introduction, Woolf’s and Winterson’s writing styles appear very
different and therefore do not immediately invite a connection through stylistic pastiche. But
when Genette speaks of pastiche as imitating style, he means identifying the idiolect, the
specific stylistic and thematic features, of the imitated corpus (ibid: 83); style is both the unity
between expression and content, a unity unique to each writer, and a vision – a way of seeing
things (ibid: 105). Hence style is not limited to writing techniques and a textual level; it
encompasses content, themes, visions and for the good imitator - something Genette borrowed
from Marcel Proust and agrees with – it includes capturing ‘the tune under the words’ (ibid:
81). It is mainly these ‘style-as-vision’ and ‘style-as-tune’ definitions that are worth noticing
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Aalborg University
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in the Woolf – Winterson relation, since they raise the pastiche to a higher level, making it
possible to speak of pastiche despite of different writing styles. I join the definition of parody
as satirically loaded and of pastiche as without satire, but with admiration for the pastiched
author. It is this pastiche-as-homage function I rely on since Winterson’s claimed fascination
with Woolf makes unlikely the possibility of her mocking her modernist heroine.
2.3. Paratext and Allusion: Indicators of Intertextual Referencing
Gérard Genette poses other intertextual, or, as he defines them, transtextual terms useful for
my analysis in chapter four. He states that pastiche is a genre and “all generic categories [are]
most often revealed by means of a paratextual sign” (Genette 1997: 8) - this being “a title, a
subtitle, intertitles; prefaces, postfaces, notices, forewords, etc.” (ibid: 3). Hence intertextual
relations, such as pastiche, can be hinted in a paratext, alerting the reader of a possible relation
to a former text or paratext. Such a relationship was exemplified in the Introduction in my
interpretation of Winterson’s paratext “A Work of My Own” to be an imitation of Woolf’s
paratext A Room of One’s Own, revealing an intertextual connection. The imitation indicates
that Winterson’s chapter is a pastiche of the style and message of Woolf’s essay. By style, I
mean the style-as-vision and style-as-tune presented in the previous section, since Winterson
in her chapter, as mentioned in the Introduction, addresses the same subjects as Woolf and
fulfils and develops her visions for progress within women’s writing.
Another useful term is ‘allusion’. ‘Allusion’ is “[…] an enunciation whose full meaning
presupposes the perception of a relationship between it and another text, to which it
necessarily refers by some inflections that would otherwise remain unintelligible” (Genette
1997: 2). Genette’s definition is very explicit in claiming the allusion to be incomprehensible
unless the reader is aware of the relationship. For instance, if the reader is oblivious to an
allusion to Woolf, it does not make Winterson’s actual writing incomprehensible; however it
would make the reader overlook any added information given through this allusion. Hoesterey
makes a similar claim regarding the reading of a pastiche, which is optimised by a prior
knowledge of the pastiched author and his/her style (Hoesterey 2001: 93). As initiated in
relation to intertextuality, allusion is also defined as “[…] a passing reference, without explicit
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Aalborg University
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identification, to a literary or historical person, place, or event, or to another literary work or
passage” (Abrams 2005: 10). This definition by Abrams is very helpful for my analysis of
references in Winterson’s works to either Woolf or her writing. According to Hutcheon, the
alluding process begins by the reader comprehending the literal significance; recognising it as
an echo from a past source; realising interpretation is necessary; remembering the intention of
the source text and then connecting and completing the meaning (Hutcheon 2000: 95). When
applying allusion, I seek to recognise the echo from Woolf and identify her original intentions
in order to investigate the contribution of the allusion to Winterson’s work. Furthermore, I
apply allusion as defined by Abrams when dealing with any kind of passing references in
Winterson’s writing to Woolf.
2.4. Deployment of Terms
The terms just discussed generally deal with texts within all art forms, but when I speak of
them here, I refer to literary texts. I apply intertextuality as the overall term, covering any kind
of reference between texts. That is, I surpass the original structuralist notion and implement
the broader definition, encompassing for instance echoes and allusions. As discussed above,
an allusion is an unspecified passing reference to a literary person, place, event, work or
passage, and in order to specify this reference, the reader must recognise the allusion as an
echo from the past and consider the original intentions to comprehend its purpose in a present
text. I apply this term in relation to identifying and interpreting intertextual references to
Woolf in textual examples from Winterson’s work, and the allusions contribute to my
investigation of pastiche, which deals with imitation of style.
As seen above, it is agreed that pastiche is imitation, but this aside; the theorists suggest
different characteristics of and motives for pastiching. I do not limit my deployment of
pastiche to one of these suggestions, but rather combine them into my own version of the
term. Overall, pastiche is the imitation of an idiosyncratic style or idiolect of another text,
author or era. The imitated style and idiolect cover both writing techniques and what Genette
called vision and tune, imitating an author’s ‘tune under the words’ and way of seeing things.
Furthermore, following Hutcheon, pastiche focuses on similarity and correspondence with
former texts, imitating the indefinite possibilities of these – the latter paralleling Genette’s
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Aalborg University
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vision. Finally, I include Hoesterey’s point that pastiche has the possible purpose of paying
homage. Though the term allusion covers references to many different instances, and
therefore seems broad, I consider it sub-categorical to pastiche, since its functions of
portraying echoes from the past and original intentions contribute to revealing pastiches of
Woolf’s vision and the possibilities of her texts.
Paratexts are indicative of intertextual references. Compared to the other terms, paratext is
of minor importance, but when intertextual relations are hinted in a paratext, they are both
obvious and meaningful, as shown in the Introduction, which is why I include the term.
Before I can move on and apply these terms in the analysis of Woolf’s influence on
Winterson’s work, it is necessary to introduce Virginia Woolf and her writing project.
3. Woolf’s Project
When outlining something as complex as the project of an author’s work, certain
considerations are necessary. First of all, I find such an outline of Woolf and her writing
necessary for the understanding of my analysis and overall thesis. Secondly, it can be
approached by focusing on either her aesthetics or literary modes and by relying on the claims
of critics, her fiction and/or her non-fiction. A focus on her aesthetics would provide a good
insight into her general beliefs and the purpose of her writing, while a focus on her fiction
would reveal her way of portraying these beliefs and purposes. My main focus is on the latter,
since it concerns her way of ‘making it new’, and this is the focus I need in order to
investigate her influence on Winterson’s way of ‘making it new’. Even though relying
entirely on critics would result in a fruitful discussion of Woolf’s project, I believe this would
remove the focus from her own expressions. Instead, referring to her fiction and non-fiction,
her own direct and indirect statements would form the outlining of her project. However,
considering the limited space for this outline, it is not possible to conclude on her general
project from a few examples, and therefore, I include some central statements about Woolf’s
writing from critics who have considered her entire oeuvre and its reception. For this, as
mentioned, I refer mainly to The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf (2006).
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Considering the range of my thesis, a selection is necessary from Woolf’s extensive oeuvre.
Therefore, as also stated in 1.1., I choose her novels Mrs Dalloway (1925) and Orlando – A
Biography (1928) from which to offer textual examples, since I find that they contain
examples representing aspects of Woolf’s project that are fruitful when placed in comparison
with Winterson’s writing. I offer a few examples in this chapter, which will be followed by
several others in the analysis, where they are discussed in connection with examples of
Winterson’s writing. Furthermore, her essays Modern Fiction (1925), A Room of One’s Own
(1929) and Women and Fiction (1929) mainly represent the non-fiction from which I cite
statements that reflect some of her visions of the future development of writing; visions she
might not manage to put forth in her own fiction.
As mentioned in the Introduction, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an acknowledged,
influential modernist writer known for ‘making it new’. She was born and lived most of her
life in London, where she was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a highly influential group
of writers, critics and artists, gathering for discussions about literature, criticism and art
(Abrams 2005: 26). This membership allowed her to be inspired by other art forms and
contributed to her insight into the historical context of her own writing - an insight rarely
found with writers (Woolf 1979: foreword (no page number)). Her project consistently
reflects a variety of paradoxes.
First of all, Woolf’s position in relation to feminism has been discussed for decades
(Goldman 2006: 130ff). She seeks to avoid feminist propaganda in her work (Woolf 1979:
21f), and in A Room of One’s Own, she states that “[…] to praise one’s own sex is always
suspect, often silly” (Woolf 1993b: 77) and “[…] that it is fatal for anyone who writes to think
of their sex” (ibid: 94), thus advocating for androgynous writing. However, in this same
essay, she addresses the material conditions for women writers and claims it necessary for a
woman to have her own money and room in order to thrive as a writer (ibid: 3). Moreover, in
Women and Fiction, she claimed it necessary to reform the woman’s sentence:
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Aalborg University
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[…] the very form of the sentence does not fit her. It is a sentence made by
men; too loose, too heavy, too pompous for a woman’s use. […] this a
woman must make for herself, altering and adapting the current sentence
until she writes one that takes the natural shape of her thought without
crushing or distorting it (Woolf 1929: 48)
Here, she contradicts her disclamation of focussing on a writer’s sex, when she singles out
women in her statement, thus obscuring her feminist position by both removing gender from
the act of writing and addressing the subject in it. She also focuses on the general
development of women’s literature. Like Winterson, she looks to her past as she argues that
“[…] books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately” (Woolf
1993a: 72) and “[…] many famous women […] have been before me, making the path
smooth, and regulating my steps” (ibid: 57). Here Woolf states her belief in the importance of
the connection between writers and texts over time and her respect for tradition in her project
of renewal. What I explore in this thesis is how Woolf has ‘smoothened’ Winterson’s path
and ‘regulated’ her steps.
This both/and position is augmented as she continues her focus on the woman writer,
suggesting marriage to hinder the achievement of the necessary material conditions and
suggesting it impossible to flourish as an artist while entering a marriage (Goldman 2006: 42).
These statements are juxtaposed with her own marriage to another member of the Bloomsbury
group, namely Leonard Woolf, which then indicates that she will never flourish as a writer
herself, which at least now reflects a paradox given her success. Like Woolf, her characters
marry in spite of their opposition. In Orlando, for instance, Orlando ends up getting married
though she initially resisted it, but only because she felt “[…] forced at length to consider the
most desperate of remedies, which was to yield completely and submissively to the spirit of
the age, and take a husband” (Woolf 1993a: 167). Moreover, the eponymous heroine in Mrs
Dalloway gets married though she originally “[…] spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe”
(Woolf 1996: 25). Hence, women enter into marriage out of tradition and conformity, and so
Woolf both criticises and acknowledges the power of this tradition and the need to conform.
Adding to the criticism of the institution of marriage is her own adultery with women. Not
only is she repeatedly unfaithful, breaking her marriage vows, she is unfaithful with women,
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Aalborg University
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disrespecting the heterosexual norm and obscuring also her sexual orientation as being
both/and. In this relation, Woolf made it her project to kill off ‘the angel of the house’, the
Victorian ideal of a woman, wife and mother (Woolf 1931: 58), and in Professions for
Women (1931), she claimed to have succeeded with this ‘murder’, but “[…] telling the truth
about my own experiences as a body, I do not think I solved” (ibid: 62). Not being straight
forward about her passions is reflected in Woolf’s indirect portrayal of female love in Mrs
Dalloway: “[…] the purity, the integrity, of her feelings for Sally. It was not like one’s
feelings for a man. […] it had a quality that could only exist between women” (Woolf 1996:
25). This again suggests the power of convention, but along with her lesbian adultery, she
attracts the attention of lesbian critics.
However, the conformity in her novels to heterosexual relations and the androgynous
portrayal of sex, gender and identity, manifested in the sex change in Orlando, rejects this
attention. Orlando’s identity and gender are described by the narrator as unaffected by his sex
change: “Orlando remained precisely as he had been. […] but in future we must, for
convention’s sake, say ‘her’ for ‘his’, and ‘she’ for ‘he’” (Woolf 1993a: 98). Sex is of no
influence on identity or gender, which suggests individuals to contain a mixture of both male
and female qualities. Along with Orlando’s unproblematic and repeated cross-dressing, this
indicates that gender is chosen, performed and perceived according to clothes and manners.
Through these both/and positions concerning marriage, gender and sexuality, Woolf also
instigates a break from the traditional love plot, suggesting the possibility of her characters
having non-heterosexual relationships, choosing not to marry or not to have relations all
together. However, this is as mentioned only suggested, since none of these possibilities are
fully explored, and thus, Woolf is both a conformist under the influence of tradition and a
nonconformist, attempting to disrupt binary oppositions within societal and literary
conventions.
Aside from being affected by tradition in relation to actions and themes in her fiction, her
writing style has traces to Victorian nonlinearity and fragmentariness, to the Romantic
distinction between mechanical and rhythmic modes of thought (Whitworth 2000: 152), to
formalist theories (Goldman 2006: 131f), and, acknowledged by herself, is under both
Russian and contemporary modern influence (Woolf 1925: 150ff). Her writing is a
combination of all of the above in her attempt to challenge the conventions within genre and
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Aalborg University
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form; leading to her being greeted as an “[…] innovator of experimental form,
‘impressionism’ and stream-of-consciousness” (Goldman 2006: 127).
Woolf’s aim for progress within writing is reflected in Modern Fiction, in which she finds
writers to be slaves of convention: “[I]f he [the novelist] could write what he chose, not what
he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would
be no plot” (Woolf 1925: 150). Good writing must search for and capture life and so “[…] let
us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall” (ibid.). By
letting the plot be driven by and reflect mind and feeling, it would disappear all together, but
under the impact of convention, Woolf ‘only’ managed to move towards a more fragmented
and non-linear plot.
Woolf reflects images of the mind by applying the narrative method stream-ofconsciousness, most noticeably in Mrs Dalloway. Combined with a third-person narrator
shifting between focalizers, the story is presented to the reader through the various characters’
thoughts and flashbacks, just as characterisation also relies on the characters’ thoughts of each
other. These narrative shifts and moments of experience and feeling come to dominate the
plot, moving away from traditional narrative continuity, characterisation and sense of time.
This focus on experiences of the mind, leading to streams-of-consciousnesses breaking the
narrative, alludes to lyric poetry, which Hoesterey states “[…] asserts itself in extensive
segments, breaking the narrative flow” (2001: 91). Woolf is indeed known to experiment with
genre (Goldman 2006: 38) and one of these is poetry, in relation to which she has been said to
bring the canvas to the novel and display the musical qualities of language (Oser 2006: 92).
Aside from affecting the plot by breaking the narrative flow, Woolf’s writing style conveys
the sense of poetry through wordplay, rhythm and repetition; “[…] away and away it went,
fast and fading, away and away the aeroplane shot” (Woolf 1996: 21); “[b]ut stop, stop your
iron pelt of words, lest you flay us all alive, and yourself too” (Woolf 1993a: 147); “[…] to
feel for himself for ever and ever and ever alone” (ibid: 14). Examples are multiple and along
with themes of love, nature and literature her prose attains a poetic connotation, initiating a
disruption of the boundaries between prose and poetry - again a both/and position.
Woolf also experiments with biography, realism, fantasy and history – all leading to the
juxtaposition of fact and fiction, of which Orlando is a very good example. The complete title
is Orlando – A Biography, which indicates that the text is a factual story about a real person –
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Aalborg University
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which is true to some degree, since many elements of Orlando’s life are adopted from the life
of Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West, to whom the novel is also dedicated (Woolf 1993a:
xxviii). However, elements such as a time span of more than 400 years while Orlando ages
barely 20, the sex change and the appearance of gods and spirits integrate the fantasy genre,
foregrounding fiction and making the reader question facts and the truthfulness and
conventions of the biography genre. Furthermore, factual historical events and settings are
intermixed with Orlando’s fictional life, questioning also history. So, Orlando is in itself a
reflection of both/and positions; being both fact and fiction, biography and novel, fantasy and
realism. This genre-mix, along with metafictional comments throughout the text, is a way for
Woolf to broaden the perception of writing, invite further experiments with form and criticise
the governing patriarchal voice.
The narrative methods, plot structure and genre-mix reflect Woolf’s advocacy for a new
way of telling stories. Orlando too is a writer and “[…] he began to be a little weary of the
repetition, for a nose can only be cut off in one way and maidenhood lost in another – or so it
seemed to him – whereas the arts and the sciences had a diversity about them which stirred his
curiosity profoundly” (Woolf 1993b: 22). As expressed here in Orlando, in the inclusion of
poetry and in the following quotation from Women and Fiction, this renewal could be a move
towards a diversity known from other art forms. “[The novel] will become, more than at
present, a work of art like any other, and its resources and its limitations will be explored”
(Woolf 1929: 51).
Woolf ‘makes it new’ by attempting to change the subject matter of literature within
feminism, sexuality, gender, identity, marriage, history, fact and fiction and in her attempt to
change literary form, experimenting with narrative methods, plot and genre. In relation to this
attempt, a number of paradoxes occur which are related to her wish for alteration within
writing juxtaposed with conformity to tradition and with the restrictions she claimed present
upon writers of her time from both societal and literary conventions.
In the following chapter, relying mainly on the terms pastiche and allusion, I investigate
intertextual references in Winterson’s work to Woolf’s texts and to the possibilities of her
texts.
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Aalborg University
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4. Fact and Fiction in The Passion – Pastiching Woolf’s Expressive
and Thematic Style
Winterson has written what she refers to as a ‘series’ of works, but considering the limited
scope of this thesis, it is not possible to analyse all of them here. Therefore, I choose to focus
upon The Passion (1987), while occasionally referring to her other works when relevant for
interpretation. In Winterson’s series of works are many examples of intertextual references to
Woolf’s project, her prominent themes, textual elements and her life. Aside from narrowing
down the analysis to mainly focusing on The Passion, it is thus necessary to reduce the
analysis further to focus on specific references. As discussed in the previous chapter, a
number of paradoxes occur in Woolf’s attempt to renew the novel’s subject matter and style,
as she is simultaneously under the influence of societal and literary conventions, e.g.
fact/fiction, feminism/androgyny, history/fantasy and conformity/nonconformity. Throughout
this chapter, the analysis of the intertextual referencing from Winterson to Woolf is guided by
these paradoxes in order to reveal Woolf’s impact on Winterson’s writing, though mainly by
fact and fiction as it largely encompasses the others. The paradoxes are relevant on different
levels of interpretation, including both factual elements of real life; incidents, settings,
persons, time, etc. and the presentation of the same in fiction, through characters, narrators
and genres.
Apart from these paradoxes, constituting the thread of the following analysis, the structure
of this chapter is formed by the theoretical terms discussed in chapter two. Here, allusion was
explained as a passing intertextual reference, echoing a past source and its original intentions,
which helps reveal references in Winterson’s texts to Woolf’s texts. Moreover, the term
contributes to the revelation and investigation of pastiche, which is applied in relation to
stylistic imitation of themes, visions, tunes and possibilities of former texts, revealing
intertextual references from Winterson to Woolf. As defined by Genette (p. 9), style is the
unity between expression and content - between stylistic and thematic features. Hence, in this
chapter, I investigate Winterson’s writing style in a comparative analysis to Woolf’s style;
firstly as a possible pastiche of expression and secondly as pastiche of the treatment of
particular themes. At times, this distinction will not remain so clear cut, since, for instance,
fact and fiction are both part of an expressive style and a theme.
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Aalborg University
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The paradoxes all occur in Woolf’s project to refashion narrative, plot and subject matter of
the novel, and therefore I begin this analysis with an investigation of Winterson’s and
Woolf’s narrative methods and plot structures in order to reveal their way of expressing the
paradoxes through characters, narrators, metafiction and genre-mixing. As mentioned, I focus
mainly on fact and fiction, which are primarily investigated in The Passion. One reason for
finding this the most interesting work to study in this relation is the refrain sounding in the
novel: “I’m telling you stories. Trust me” (Winterson 1996b: 5, 13, 40, 69, 160). This is also
the very last sentence of the novel, reflecting its importance and suggestive value in relation
to Winterson’s intentions. With this refrain, the narrator repeatedly incites the narratee and,
indirectly, the reader to trust in the same sentence as the admission of telling stories - thus,
very likely, of making things up. So, how can the reader trust the incitement to trust? The
statement reflects the complexity of the fact/fiction juxtaposition. Another reason for
choosing The Passion is that it includes allusions and pastiches of the other paradoxes dealt
with by Woolf, i.e. concerning marriage, androgyny, cross-dressing and writing. When
relevant, the analysis of The Passion is supplemented by examples from other novels.
4.1. Pastiching a Broadening Perspective of Narrative
In terms of narration, Woolf insisted upon androgynous writing, had a third-person narrator
jump between both male and female focalizers, e.g. in Mrs Dalloway, and used the narrative
method stream-of-consciousness, which presented both male and female flows of thoughts.
Furthermore, her narrator in Orlando is metafictional, juxtaposing fact with fiction both
through the actual metafiction and through parodying the biography genre, which, referring to
parody as discussed in chapter two (p. 8), reflects satire of and critical distance to the
biography genre and thus also to the facts it is expected to represent. Hence, Woolf’s narration
places focus on fiction and indirectly questions facts and the truth-value of narrators, which
helped disrupt the governing patriarchal voice of her time and made the reader question truth
and illusion, fact and fiction and opened up the traditional novel genre, broadening both the
perspective at hand and the future possibilities of the novel. My claim is that Winterson
imitates some of these methods and their possibilities as part of an overall pastiche of Woolf’s
expressive style.
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Aalborg University
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In Mrs Dalloway, the third-person narrator shifts fluidly between focalizers, male and female.
To exemplify, below is a shift between Mrs Dalloway’s daughter and the mentally ill
Septimus:
Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminster
omnibus.
Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow,
which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made
the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to
Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting-room; watching the
watery gold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some live
creature on the roses, on the wall-paper. (Woolf 1996: 101)
After four pages of following Elizabeth and her thoughts, the shift to Septimus is only
apparent three lines into his point of view. Therefore, the reader experiences these three lines
in retrospect and is suddenly following another focalizer, in another setting, in another
context. Such shifts throughout the novel also mark the shifts between the different
characters’ stories and break the narrative flow, raising the question of who is speaking at
what time. The narrative is driven by the characters’ thoughts, their flashbacks and reflections
on settings and on each other, rather than by the androgynous narrator. Thereby, the
experiences of the mind and everyday life are foregrounded, and the traditional presentations
of setting and character and narrative continuity are backgrounded. This way, Woolf gets to
portray an image of the mind which “[…] receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic,
evanescent” (Woolf 1925: 150), and these impressions govern the unfolding of her plots,
which is discussed later (4.2.).
A similar narrative style is found in Winterson’s The Passion. As Woolf, her narrative
point of view jumps from one focalizer to the next, both male and female, but where Woolf
achieved to foreground her characters’ experiences through stream-of-consciousness, this is
achieved by Winterson through the use of first-person narrators mainly. An example of this in
The Passion is where the point of view shifts between the two protagonists, Villanelle and
Henri:
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Aalborg University
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Will I gamble it again?
Yes.
Après moi, le deluge.
Not really. A few drowned but a few have drowned before. He overestimated himself. Odd that a man should come to believe in myths of his
own making.
On this rock, the events in France hardly touched me.
(Winterson 1996b: 151, original emphasis)
After having followed Villanelle’s narrative, which ends with the quotation’s first two lines, it
is not until the last sentence of the quotation that the reader is offered hints to the shift of
narrator. To recognise the shift, one must know that Henri is confined in a mental institution
on a mountain (“this rock”) and that he is likely to be the narrator when the topic falls on
“France” and Napoleon (the “he” in the example). Only at the bottom of the page, when the
narrator tells that “I keep getting letters from Villanelle” (ibid.), it is made clear that it is no
longer Villanelle, but Henri who is narrating. Consequently, these narrative shifts, like
Woolf’s style, create gaps which are experienced retrospectively, breaking the narrative flow
and forcing the reader to stay alert and actively come to understand the characters in order to
know which one of them is speaking and which story is being told. Winterson’s shifts
between narrators are blunter than between focalizers, and thereby show augmentation of the
effect created by Woolf. This narrative method greatly affects the plots of the novels and
places focus on storytelling, both are stylistic traits I return to in 4.2.
Another narrative trait similar to Woolf’s is the narrator turning self-reflexive. This trait
first gained footing in modernist literature and is now a common characteristic, along with
metafiction, in postmodern writing (Abrams 2005: 244). Albeit a general trait, I find it
relevant in this comparative analysis to identify how Winterson on a large scale incorporates
the modernist tradition, exemplified by Woolf, and its impact on her writing in a postmodern
context. This is also parallel to Woolf’s way of both renewing and remaining within a literary
tradition (chap. 3). Combined with specific examples of allusions in Winterson’s texts to
Woolf’s, it is this overall observation that leads to my claim that Winterson pastiches Woolf’s
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Aalborg University
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style. Furthermore, the self-reflexive and metafictional narrators draw attention to the fictional
nature of the narrated, which is contrasted with fact in the examples below as the narrators
present the narrated as factual to them. Thus, this method juxtaposes fact with fiction, which
is a main theme in this thesis.
In The Passion, the initial perception of Henri is as a traditional first-person narrator.
However, similar to Woolf’s Orlando, the original perception is disturbed. In Orlando, the
biographer is self-reflexive and metafictional about narrating the story: “[…] we lay bare
rudely, as a biographer may” (Woolf 1993a: 20); “To continue the story” (ibid: 34); “But to
return” (ibid: 70); “[…] to the course of our story” (ibid: 81, my emphasis). This places focus
on the construction of fiction, which is juxtaposed with the facts the biographer is expected to
and in Orlando also claims to attempt to present. Winterson has a similar focus, but where
Woolf indirectly addresses a narratee, using “our”, Winterson addresses a narratee directly,
using ‘you’: “I’m telling you stories” (Winterson 1996b: 13); “[…] he never said a sentence
like you or I would” (ibid: 30); “[…] writing this story, trying to convey to you what really
happened” (ibid: 103); “You don’t believe me? Go and see for yourself” (ibid: 159); (my
emphasis). This way, Winterson adds to her imitation of the question of ‘who is speaking’,
raised by Woolf’s narration, the question of who is spoken to; thus taking the method a step
further. Aside from addresses to the narratee and the narrative gaps, the narrative continuity is
also broken in The Passion by interruptions of Henri’s narrative:
I was covered in dead men.
In the morning, 2,000 new recruits marched into Boulogne.
Do you ever think about your childhood?
I think of it when I smell porridge (Winterson 1996b: 25)
In this example, the first-person narrative is interrupted by a question which is not marked by
inverted commas and hence, it is not a character’s line. Nonetheless, Henri answers the
question as if being interviewed. Another interruption is found when Villanelle has swallowed
her recovered heart into place (!):
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Aalborg University
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Her heart was beating.
Not possible.
I tell you her heart was beating (Winterson 1996b: 121, original emphasis)
‘Not possible’ stands alone in one line and in italics, as if the narratee’s comment to Henri’s
claim. The last sentence shows how Henri attempts to convince the narratee that he is telling
the truth. This way, the factuality of Henri’s story is directly questioned, very much in line
with the duality of fact and fiction represented in the novel’s refrain, ‘I’m telling you stories.
Trust me’. Thus, Winterson deploys metafiction, both as it was deployed by Woolf, and as it
is deployed by her postmodernist contemporaries. The added interruptions of the narrative by
Winterson coincide with her statement in Art Objects that the writer has to “[…] set a trap for
the reader’s attention” (Winterson 1996a: 189). With both authors, the metafictional narrative
technique places focus on the act of telling stories, which contributes to the questioning of
fact, and, combined with the shifting and retrospective narratives discussed earlier, the reader
is strongly incited to question the narrated. As Henri states after he and Villanelle lost their
friend, Patrick, and all hope of completing their journey to Venice; “[…] it mattered that he
saw and that he told us stories. Stories were all we had” (Winterson 1996b: 107).
The characteristics of Woolf’s use of narrative shifts and metafiction are echoed by
Winterson, who also expands on these by being more direct, challenging facts, the reader and
the truth-value of the narrator even further than Woolf. The questioning of fact and narrator
and focus on storytelling and fiction are images of both authors’ renewal of writing. A
renewal starts with the realisation of the need for change, and by questioning both fact and
fiction, the authors foreground the aspects of the novel – as well as those of society – that are
in need of change. This questioning through the narratives of fact and fiction is further
explored in, and also influences, the plots of the novels.
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Aalborg University
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4.2. Pastiching a Broadening Perspective of Plot
As mentioned, the narrative methods just discussed; narrative breaks, characters’ thoughts in
retrospect, shift of focalizers and metafiction, question fact and fiction and place focus on
storytelling. Moreover, they contribute to the forming of the plots of the novels and to
portraying an image of the complex mind. As stated previously, Woolf advocated for writing
to portray the spirit, which is partly achieved by dealing with images of the mind. This meant
dealing with trivial, fantastic and evanescent impressions (p. 20) and therefore, given the
narratives being shaped by thoughts and imaginations of the characters’ minds, this leads to
seemingly coincidental plots of layering and mixing of stories, genre-mixing and jumps back
and forth in time. Investigating these aspects of the plot in The Passion in the light of Woolf
not only reveals that Winterson in a similar expressive style portrays such an experience of
the mind, but also reveals allusions to Woolf’s texts, supporting my claim that Winterson is
influenced by Woolf and honours her work through homage pastiche.
As mentioned in the last section, metafiction and self-reflexive narrators are common
traits in literature, and surely, Woolf does not have patent on either of these methods - or on
those of genre-mixing, layering of stories, playful time perspectives and foregrounding of
mind and feelings, which are investigated here in relation to plot. Any resemblances might
therefore be coincidental, referring to modernism in general and representing Winterson as
part of a general postmodern literary development. Indeed, some of the similarities will be
coincidental, but it is by investigating these very general similarities that specific ones occur,
e.g. allusions to Woolf’s texts, revealing her influence on Winterson. The definition of
pastiche might also cause generalisations as its definitions in 2.2. would have it refer to the
entirety of a text being imitation. However, when stating that Winterson pastiches Woolf’s
style, what Genette specifies as stylistic and thematic features (p. 9), I confine the term to
signify that she integrates Woolfian stylistic traits into her own style and in some cases
expands on these, imitating also the possibilities of Woolf’s texts, as theorised by Hutcheon
(p. 8). The revelation of stylistic convergences between the two authors, combined with
allusions to Woolf’s texts, supports my claim of an intertextual relation between Winterson
and Woolf and reveals that some of the similarities are not entirely coincidental.
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Aalborg University
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4.2.1. Fact, Fiction and Feeling – A Comparison to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
In Mrs Dalloway, the androgynous narrator’s shifts between the various characters lead to a
plot governed by their thoughts and experiences of the different characters of which some are
parallel, some opposed, but all the stories are somehow connected in the end. For instance, the
characters Clarissa and Septimus never meet, but through the parallel plotting of their stories,
Septimus comes to represent Clarissa’s foil; the non-conformist spirit she did not dare to let
herself be and who pays for it with his life in the end, while she escapes (Woolf 1996: 134).
So, the reader experiences a mixing of stories, which moreover affects the timeline of the plot.
The novel is narrated in past tense and the time of the storyline spans one day of Clarissa’s
life, which is the chronology the reader can count on, but characters’ thoughts interrupt this
chronology of the daily events as they have flashbacks of each other and of how they ended
up where they are. This way she portrays how the mind travels unchronologically. For
example, the following line instigates a five-page flashback of Peter’s memories of and
feelings for Clarissa: “It was at Bourton that summer, early in the nineties, when he was so
passionately in love with Clarissa” (Woolf 1996: 44). The story would be incoherent, were it
not for tales of the past like these, indirectly describing to the reader the connection between
and the characteristics of the characters. Hereby, Woolf suggests broadening possibilities of
the plot, applying it to prioritise feeling and experience over continuity and characterisation.
The plot of The Passion is similarly constructed, layering stories and relying on tales from the
past, echoing Woolf’s style; but, as is revealed, she also takes it a step further, imitating the
possibilities of Woolf’s texts, which is a method of pastiche defined by Hutcheon (p. 9).
The Passion is divided into four chapters with the stories of the two protagonists being at
first parallel, later connected and continuously driven by their tales of the past and of each
other. In the first chapter, “The Emperor”, Henri narrates from a first-person point of view his
life story up until the age of twenty, including his endeavours in the Napoleonic Wars ending
with New Years Day, 1805. Then, by similar narration in chapter two, “The Queen of
Spades”, we learn about Villanelle, her work at a casino and her cross-dressing (as with
Henri) until New Years Day, 1805. Hereafter, their stories are intertwined as they meet and
become involved in chapter three, “The Zero Winter”, continuing into chapter four, “The
Rock” (Winterson 1996b). While this template is narrated by one narrator in Mrs Dalloway,
albeit from different points of view, Winterson’s first-person narrator-mix separates the
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Aalborg University
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various stories more distinctly, and she adds another layer to the story as she also integrates a
third-person narrator (ibid: 99)1. An example of the layering of stories is when the two
protagonists have met. The reader follows Henri’s point of view, when he states: “This was
her [Villanelle’s] story” (ibid: 89), narrating Villanelle’s story into his own. Then, Villanelle
narrates the stories of the game of three (ibid: 91), the Queen of spades (ibid: 94), getting
married and sold as an army prostitute (ibid: 99), integrating the different stories she has come
across in her life. Finally, in the middle of her narration of these stories, a third-person
narrative interrupts with a short tale of a young Jewish man named Salvadore. Thus, the
layering of narrators and number of stories intertwined in The Passion prove Winterson’s
claim in Art Objects that she writes “[…] stories within stories within stories within stories”
(Winterson 1996a: 189), taking narrative and plot further than Woolf, constantly challenging
the reader to keep up.
The above example indicates that Henri is the main narrator of The Passion, and there are
clues to this throughout the novel. As in Mrs Dalloway, the plot is constructed from the two
protagonists’ tales of past experiences, but small paragraphs in present tense occur in Henri’s
narrative referring to him as narrating the story from his room on the rock. Already on the
third page, a short section begins with “Nowadays…” (Winterson 1996b: 5), referring to
Henri in a present time, looking back. Furthermore, this section ends with the first appearance
of “I’m telling you stories. Trust me” - also in present tense, initiating the questioning of
Henri’s truthfulness, which I return to later in this subsection. In most of the sections in
present tense, references are made to the rock from where he seems to be writing the story: “I
didn’t expect to come here. The view is good” (ibid: 80); “I have to stop writing now. […]
They like to keep us all healthy here” (ibid: 81); “When I think of that night, here in this place
where I will always be […] I lose all sense of day or night, I lose all sense of my work,
writing this story” (ibid: 103, my emphases); and in chapter four, the present tenses only
become more frequent, until Henri sits in his room, narrating about his intentions for the
future. Thereby, the action of the novel is narrowed down to the time it takes Henri to write
the story, while the rest, as in Mrs Dalloway, are thoughts and memories.
However, Winterson takes the time perspective a step further than Woolf with the mixing
of past, present and future tenses, disturbing the narrative and the reader even more. The
1
This mix of first- and third-person narrators is used to an even greater extent in Art & Lies (1995), Gut
Symmetries (1997) and The Powerbook (2001) and the parallel narrative in Sexing the Cherry (1991a).
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Maj-Britt Boll Jensen
Aalborg University
___________________________________________________________________________
present tense is also used in Villanelle’s narrative, but here it has function of making her
present in the past, so to speak. For instance, the first two parallel chapters end, respectively,
with Henri’s words: “It was New Years Day, 1805, and I was twenty” (ibid: 45) and
Villanelle’s words: “It is New Years Day, 1805” (ibid: 76). So, the present tense stresses
Henri’s retrospective narrative and Villanelle’s presence, but since it is used in two different
ways, and Villanelle neither refers to writing the story nor presents Henri as a narrator in her
own, as does Henri, Henri remains the superior narrator.
He also directly claims himself the owner of the story, as he lists his possessions on the
rock; “[…] my notebooks, this story, my lamp and wicks, my pens and my talisman” (ibid:
152, my emphasis). Placing him as narrator of the story enhances the allusions in this
connection to Woolf’s paratext, A Room of One’s Own: “[…] I had a little room of my own;
the privilege of being a special attendant. I kept my few books there, a flute I was hoping to
learn and my journal. I wrote…” (ibid: 36); “[…] they had him moved to a room by himself.
He was much quieter after that, using the writing materials and a lamp I brought him” (ibid:
147); “I have a room, a garden, company and time for myself. Aren’t these the things people
ask for?” (ibid: 157). The references to Henri’s accesses to a room of his own as a “privilege”,
rooms from which he is able to write his story, echo Woolf’s message in the essay alluded to,
of a room of one’s own being a necessary condition to write. These allusions contribute to the
overall investigation of pastiche, since they stress Winterson’s intertextual relation to Woolf.
Even more so does the following presented allusion to Woolf in the context of Henri’s
narrative.
The most interesting part of Winterson’s clues to Henri as the main narrator is an allusion
to the insanity of Septimus in Mrs Dalloway. The present tenses and references to the rock,
where Henri is confined, insane and presumably narrating The Passion, allude to the state of
mind of insane Septimus. Shortly before killing himself, Woolf’s narrator follows the
thoughts of Septimus’ wife: “Then there were the visions. He was drowned, he used to say,
and lying on a cliff with the gulls screaming over him. He would look over the edge of the
sofa down into the sea” (Woolf 1996: 102). As in Septimus’ vision, Henri is on a rock
(“cliff”) with a view of the river (“sea”) and most of his references to his solitary room on the
rock are accompanied by the mentioning of gulls; “I didn’t expect to come here. The view is
good and the seagulls take bread at my window” (Winterson 1996b: 80); “I can hear
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Maj-Britt Boll Jensen
Aalborg University
___________________________________________________________________________
Bonaparte; he didn’t last long on his rock. […] On a windy island in the face of gulls” (ibid:
133); and repeated: “At my window the seagulls cry” (ibid: 153, 154). Furthermore, they are
both insane and injured after having participated in war, they despise the human cruelty of it,
and they see and speak with the dead, particularly their lost comrades: “[…] Evans was
speaking. The dead were with him. ‘Evans, Evans!’ he cried” (Woolf 1996: 69); “[…] the
voices started, and after the voices the dead themselves” (Winterson 1996b: 142); “Patrick
was here just now. You missed him” (ibid: 149). Hence, Winterson echoes Woolf’s
description of insanity and its function of displaying an insane mind and the damages of war.
Moreover, the allusion has the effect in The Passion of questioning the entire story narrated
by Henri, because of his insanity and the possibility of it all being a vision – as the cliff and
the seagulls were to insane Septimus. In retrospect, considering the seagull’s representation of
insanity, the allusion also hints to Henri’s insanity early in the story, when at war, “[…] he lay
awake till the seagulls began to cry” (ibid: 45).
This way of alluding to Woolf’s portrayal of insanity through Septimus in Mrs Dalloway
is also found in Art & Lies in relation to one of the three protagonists, Picasso. After having
been in and out of mental hospitals, Septimus jumps out of a window and dies to avoid such
readmission (Woolf 1996: 108). This scenario is also seen played out as Picasso jumps off her
roof to avoid the doctor her father summoned to take her to a mental institution (Winterson
1995: 85, 174ff). At first hand, they both seem to jump on their own to flee the doctors.
However, Septimus who represents non-conformity and suppressed poetry in Woolf’s novel
was pushed by patriarchy, society, science and the material world, as there was no room for a
spirit like his. In parallel, Winterson surprises her reader as it turns out that Picasso’s father
actually pushed her off the roof (ibid: 158), as there was no room for Picasso in her family –
for that she was simply too colourful. Her father did not approve of Picasso’s passion for
painting; “He felt it revealed an excess of testosterone” (Winterson 1995: 40). Unlike
Septimus, Picasso survives by running away to paint – figuratively, art saves her and, as she
triumphs, so does art’s advent into the novel, fulfilling Woolf’s advocacy for writing to
become more like an art form (p. 17).
Finally, the allusions to Septimus’ insanity simultaneously bring to mind Woolf’s own
repeated insanity and suicide – like Septimus to avoid readmission – and by alluding to her
description of insanity, Winterson also signals respect for Woolf’s condition.
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Master’s Thesis
August 2008
Maj-Britt Boll Jensen
Aalborg University
___________________________________________________________________________
Henri’s insanity again juxtaposes fact with fiction and recalls the questioning of his
truthfulness, which is fuelled by a number of other factors. First of all, there is his restatement
of “I’m telling you stories. Trust me” (Winterson 1996b: 5, 13, 160), already discussed, which
is also stated by Patrick (ibid: 40) in an address to Henri, and by Villanelle (ibid: 69), who is
indirectly narrated by Henri. Hence, by plotting a layering of their stories, Patrick and
Villanelle both tell Henri stories and incite him to trust them, a duality that he passes on to the
narratee. Moreover, the layering of stories mixes fantasy elements with elements of real life,
as is also seen in Orlando, challenging fact and foregrounding fiction. I return to this latter
subject after addressing the final factor in this context, which is the juxtaposition of fact and
fiction figuring as a theme. As mentioned in the beginning, pastiche is the combination of
imitating stylistic and thematic features, and while I mainly separate the two in this analysis
for the sake of overview, saving thematic imitation for section 4.3., I include the thematic
integration of fact and fiction here, since it contributes to the reader’s perception of Henri’s
truth-value.
The fact/fiction juxtaposition is addressed through the fictional characters’ questioning of
fact. Before turning to Henri’s treatment hereof, I turn to an example from Art & Lies, where
the character Handel claims all facts, at least to some degree, to be fiction:
A great deal of scientific truth has later turned out to be the observer’s
fiction. It is irrational to assume that this is no longer the case. […] I know
how difficult it is to say exactly what happened even a moment earlier. If
someone were with me, their testimony might corroborate my own, or it
may not (Winterson 1995: 30)
Hence, he claims that observers cannot be objective and do not have the same perceptions of
what they experience, and therefore, science, history and other accounts of fact are subjective,
possibly fictional and should be questioned. This includes the biography genre and therefore
also includes as well as expands the questioning by Woolf in her parody of the genre in
Orlando. Herein, the biographer states that biographers’ “[…] simple duty is to state the facts
as far as they are known, and so let the reader make of them what he may” (Woolf 1993a: 47).
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Aalborg University
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However, returning to The Passion, Henri states that “[…] not all facts are known and what is
known is not necessarily a fact” (Winterson 1996b: 29), so ‘simply stating facts’ often means
narrating a story as one perceives it, and hence it is no longer fact but fiction. This
problematic also occurs when Henri starts keeping a diary in a wish to preserve a truthful
account of his experiences, but his friend claims no such thing exists:
I started to keep a diary. I started so that I wouldn’t forget. So that in later
life […] I’d have something clear and sure to set against my memory tricks.
I told Domino; he said, ‘[…] What gives you the right to make a notebook
and shake it at me in thirty years, if we’re still alive, and say you’ve got the
truth?’ ‘I don’t care about the facts, Domino, I care about how I feel. How I
feel will change, I want to remember that.’ (Winterson 1996b: 28f)
This discussion between the characters again indicates that truth and fact are dependent on
those who report them, giving the reader the impression that not even a diary can be trusted to
contain facts – only to contain what the author felt at a given moment. Since Henri is
portrayed as the main narrator, his diary is part of this narration, meaning that Henri’s truthvalue again is questioned. So, not only does fiction appear in supposed facts, facts appear in
supposed fiction – at least what is factual to some.
Considering the focus on and allusions in connection with Henri’s writing, Winterson
suggests a mixed perception of fact and fiction, both instances affected by feelings, as writing
should also be, according to Woolf (p. 14). I find this parallel between writing and feelings to
reflect a common message from the works of Woolf and Winterson. Feelings are
uncontrollable, which is reflected in the explanation of love by the narrator in Written on the
Body: “[…] No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love
belongs to itself” (Winterson 1991b: 77). Figuratively, writing cannot be legislated; it cannot
be given orders or be cajoled into service. Writing belongs to itself. This analogy points to the
two authors’ narrative and plot structures being governed by thoughts and experiences as
hitherto discussed, and through which feelings and imagination gain ground in the forming of
the novel.
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Master’s Thesis
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Maj-Britt Boll Jensen
Aalborg University
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Woolf’s prioritisation of feelings and experiences of the mind marked a move away from
traditional plotting of events and characters by the narrator. Furthermore, she questioned the
truth-value of her biographer in Orlando indirectly through parody, and thereby also indicated
a critical approach towards this traditional perception of facts. However, where she
nonetheless kept one sole narrator and questioned facts indirectly, again indicating the
restrictions she felt from tradition, Winterson attains these expressions through similar and
augmented plotting. The experience of layers of stories is more direct in The Passion not only
due to shifts of point of view, but also of narrators, dividing the stories and leading to shifts
between past and present tenses. Along with also questioning fact more directly, through
Henri’s questionable truthfulness and as being always subjective, possibly fictional,
Winterson challenges the reader’s attention and awareness, impelling a critical view on
claimed facts. This indicates pastiche, as she imitates the further possibilities of Woolf’s
renewal, taking her style a step further from indirectness to directness while alluding to her
work in the process. In singling out Henri as the writer of the story and questioning his
believability, which are central elements to the reception of The Passion, Winterson alludes to
Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, her insanity and way of portraying insanity in Mrs Dalloway.
Hereby, she evokes Woolf and her relevance, paying her homage.
These ways of elevating and complicating storytelling and juxtaposing fact with fiction
are extended with the integration of various genres, e.g. history, fantasy and poetry.
4.2.2. History and Fantasy – Comparison to Woolf’s Orlando – A Biography
The juxtaposition of fact and fiction identified in Woolf’s and Winterson’s narrative methods
and the influence of their characters’ thoughts on the forming of the plot are greatly reflected
in their deployment of genre-mixing. The layering and intermixing of many different stories,
governed by the characters’ thoughts, lead to a reflection in the plot of the mixed impressions
of the mind by incorporating elements of reality, history, fantasy and romance. This genremix greatly adds to the blend of fact, fiction and feeling, discussed in the previous section,
and marks Woolf’s move towards more experimental plots. As mentioned, she felt restricted
in her own time by societal and literary conventions, but she instigates the move, and my
claim is that Winterson honours this attempt in a homage pastiche of Woolf’s style, not only
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Aalborg University
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by echoing Woolf’s methods but her vision of the liberation of writing by combining these
modernist methods with postmodern ones as well.
As presented in chapter three and the previous sections, Woolf integrates the biography genre
in Orlando, juxtaposing fact and fiction by parodying the genre with her metafictional
narrator. However, through this integration, she also presents aspects of reality, since many of
Orlando’s qualities and experiences are based on the life of Vita Sackville-West, Woolf’s real
life lover (p. 16). This coincides with the full title, Orlando – A Biography, which is a
paratext indicating that the genre of the story is a biography and thus reports facts of a life –
namely Orlando’s: “Up to this point in telling the story of Orlando’s life, documents, both
private and historical, have made it possible to fulfil the first duty of a biographer, which is to
plod, without looking to right or left, in the indelible footprints of truth” (Woolf 1993a: 47).
Adding to the experience of reality are the historical settings (London, Constantinople),
incidents (The Great Frost) and references to historical persons (Queen Elizabeth, Queen
Victoria, Lord Melbourne, Shakespeare, John Donne, Alexander Pope, Lord Tennyson, etc.).
These aspects of reality along with the alleged truthfully narrated story, the biography
paratext and Orlando’s similarity to Vita are representatives of fact. However, they are largely
challenged as they are mixed with clearly fictional elements of fantasy and time.
Representing fantasy are Orlando’s encounters with for instance a Queen, a princess, three
male gods and three female virtues (Woolf 1993a: 95ff), a sex change and the experience of
sleeping for seven whole days – twice. Furthermore, the time element juxtaposes a historical
time of five centuries with Orlando’s body time of 20 years, and together they disrupt the
experience of a factual biography and history. This mixture reflects Woolf’s blend of fact,
fiction and genres in her plot as an attempt to disrupt traditional notions of what writing
should be, and Orlando’s endeavours, fantastically spanning centuries and therefore also
several eras of conventions within writing, well reflect Woolf’s wishes for an opening up of
the novel genre. This plot structure, juxtaposing fact with fiction by juxtaposing elements of
history with those of fantasy, is also seen in The Passion, and looking into this, allusions to
Woolf’s texts again reveal themselves, supporting the contemplations of the earlier discussion
of the similarities between Woolf’s and Winterson’s styles not being entirely coincidental.
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Maj-Britt Boll Jensen
Aalborg University
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In the first chapter, historical elements are presented through Henri’s narrative as he takes part
in the Napoleonic Wars: “Bonaparte, the Corsican. Born in 1769, a Leo” (Winterson 1996b:
12); “In 1789 revolution opened a closed world” (ibid.); “[General] Hoche, a man of the
World” (ibid: 21); “[1804] Bonaparte announced his Coronation that coming December”
(ibid: 29). As mentioned, this chapter is plotted against the second, which is narrated by
Villanelle, who was born with webbed feet (ibid: 51), allowing her to walk on water – a clear
fantasy element. Furthermore, she is Venetian, but her many references to Venice obscure the
city’s level of reality: “the city of mazes” (49,109); “the city of disguises” (ibid: 56); “this
enchanted city” (ibid: 76); “the city of chances” (ibid: 90); “a changeable city” (ibid: 97);
“that city of destiny” (ibid: 98); “the shrinking city” (ibid: 98); “the city of Satan” (ibid: 104);
“city of madmen” (ibid: 112, 121); “a living city” (ibid: 113). So, the mystique of Villanelle is
mirrored in the city of her origin, disturbing Henri’s fairly realistic narrative, and after the two
characters’ encounter, history and fantasy elements are intermixed: Realistic references to the
war (ibid: 79, 83, 99, 133) and Henri’s confinement to the rock, “San Servolo” (ibid: 141), a
site in Venice at that time used for the mentally ill, are mixed with a fortune-teller (ibid: 115),
a never-melting icicle (ibid: 116), a tale of a princess with tears of jewels (ibid: 84f) and an
incident where Henri finds Villanelle’s heart in a box, after which she swallows it (ibid: 120f).
The plotting of the fusion between history and fantasy parallels and enlarges the experience of
Henri’s growing insanity, whose truthfulness as a narrator, as earlier discussed, is already in
question. This way, historical facts are questioned and presented in a new way, as they were
by Woolf through a similar plotting of biography and history against fantasy elements. These
elements make Winterson’s writing style reflect a tune similar to Woolf’s – an adventurous
expression disturbing reality and giving the reader the impression that anything can happen –
i.e. with reference to Genette’s definition (p. 9), she pastiches Woolf’s expressive style. Along
with the earlier discussed subjective nature of facts, the challenge of facts and genres related
to facts was a way for Woolf to question and suggest a generally more critical approach to the
hegemony of convention. Winterson follows in her footsteps in such questioning, suggesting
the reader to attain a more critical perspective towards facts, or supposed facts, and a focus
away from authors’ lives and towards the art of fiction. To exemplify Winterson’s intertextual
referencing to Woolf in this connection, I will explore two allusions by Winterson to Woolf’s
fantasy elements.
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Master’s Thesis
August 2008
Maj-Britt Boll Jensen
Aalborg University
___________________________________________________________________________
A fantasy element alluded to by Winterson is the out of body experience of the heart. In
Orlando, the eponymous hero ties his heart to an oak tree:
[…] he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart
to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced
and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out. To
the oak tree he tied it (Woolf 1993a: 15)
This quotation is on the fifth page and considering its role throughout the novel, I assign it
great importance. The oak tree is both a tree in Orlando’s garden and the title of a poem he
began in 1586. When he is publicly ridiculed for his passion with literature, he burns
everything he has ever written except ‘The Oak Tree’ (Woolf 1993a: 66f), carries it with him
for the 400 years the story spans and finishes it in the end, where it is successfully published.
Figuratively, Orlando’s heart is carried beside him in the guise of a poem, and thus, when it is
published, “she felt a bare place in her breast where she used to carry it” (ibid: 196). The
poem is the only consistent thing in his life - not even his sex remains the same (hence the
“she” in the quotation). Poetry thus occupies a central position through which Woolf indicates
that it lasts for centuries and contains its author’s heart and spirit, as she advocated writing
should do. I will return to the importance and integration of poetry in subsection 4.2.3.
The out of body experience of the heart is alluded to in The Passion, where Villanelle also
has her heart stored for most of the story. When her husband sold her as a prostitute to the
generals at war, she explains that “[t]hey didn’t give me enough time to collect my heart, only
my luggage, but I’m grateful to them for that; this is no place for a heart” (Winterson 1996b:
99). Instead, her heart remained with her ex-lover, and after becoming friends with Henri, she
asks him for help to retrieve it: “My lover still has it. I left it there. I want you to help me get
it back” (ibid: 109). Adding to the allusion is that Henri finds Villanelle’s heart beating in a
house (ibid: 120) – just like Orlando, returning home in the end, finds that “[…] the heart of
the house still beat, […] the frail indomitable heart” (Woolf 1993a: 218). I find this allusion to
be combined with two of the several refrains sounding in The Passion: “What you risk reveals
what you value” (ibid: 43, 91) and “You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play”
(Winterson 1996b: 43, 66, 73, 133). Notably, the former also sounds in Winterson’s Sexing
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Maj-Britt Boll Jensen
Aalborg University
___________________________________________________________________________
the Cherry (Winterson 1991a: 134) and Written on the Body (Winterson 1991b: 81), and I
therefore find it to convey one of the purposes of her story. The heart example indicates that
Villanelle risked her heart for love, like Orlando had risked his for poetry. She played it out,
lost it and retrieved it. Similarly, Henri risked his heart for Napoleon and lost it. Risked it
again for Villanelle and lost it, but according to her, he never lost his heart completely,
because his passion was not returned in either case (Winterson 1996b: 146). So, the novel
ends with the two protagonists in possession of their hearts, but Henri alone in a room with
only writing and storytelling and Villanelle alone in a boat. It is a romance with no happy
ending, but no regrets either. As Villanelle’s last words of narration sound: “Now that I have
it back? […] Will I gamble it again? Yes.” (ibid: 151). Winterson shows with The Passion
that it is necessary to take risks to live out one’s passions. Albeit a heart is “frail”, it is also
“indomitable”, and albeit a risk ends in loss, as it did with Villanelle, Henri and, at first,
Orlando, living is about continuing to take risks.
Woolf also displayed such risk taking when Mrs Dalloway kissed her friend Sally, but
was interrupted (Woolf 1996: 26f), and when Orlando risked his favourable position with the
court to pursue his passion for the Russian princess, Sasha, who did not show up for their
runaway (Woolf 1993a: 26ff) - both risks, marking the two protagonists only experience of
true love and passion. However, both characters end up married to someone else, reflecting
Woolf’s fear of writing the truth about her own passions in her time (p. 14). Hence, The
Passion displays how Winterson takes it a step further by allowing her characters to be
entirely true to their passions, even though, as indicated with the ending and above refrains,
they lose and end up alone, but one should nevertheless keep playing the game.
The other allusion I include here is to the fantasy element of Orlando’s sex change. As
mentioned, the sex change is central to Woolf’s project, with which she suggested that one’s
spirit and identity remain the same regardless of sex and with which she put forth a both/and
perception of identity, incorporating both male and female qualities. Furthermore, she stated
that the preoccupation with sex and gender in relation to writing and writers should be
minimised (p. 13). This is, as earlier with fact and fiction, more of a theme in Woolf’s project
than an expressive style, but it springs from the fantasy element of the sex change - hence its
inclusion here.
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Master’s Thesis
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Maj-Britt Boll Jensen
Aalborg University
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The theme is expressed through the cross-dressing of Villanelle, which I return to (4.1.3.), but
I part here for a moment with The Passion to show Winterson’s echo of these original
intentions by Woolf in her allusion to the sex change in Boating for Beginners (1985). Where
Orlando’s change happens magically over night, Winterson’s character, Marlene, portrays the
modern way to sex change. She was born male, but had a sex change operation, making her
“all woman” (Winterson 1999: 36). However, she has come to miss her penis:
I want it back. […] Of course, I don’t mean the same one. Any one would
do, even a smaller one, just so that I could feel it was there. […] I love my
breasts. I go to sleep holding them. I don’t want to loose them. I just want it
back as well. […] I only want it for decoration, so it might be quite nice to
have it in a different shade (Winterson 1999: 37)
Humorously, the biological factors traditionally determining one’s sex are made light of here
by Winterson, in her description of Marlene as a hermaphrodite who is on the lookout for a
penis as if shopping for a sweater. The influence and importance of sex and gender are
sharply diminished, and thus the allusion echoes and augments Woolf’s theory of androgyny.
Winterson also communicates this theory to her readers through a sexless, first-person
narrator in Written on the Body, who has both male and female lovers, and thereby takes the
theory a step further, portraying love to be androgynous as well. I interpret her inclusion of
the example as a homage pastiche to Woolf, honouring her theory as well as its possibilities.
Although sex and gender are subjects under the heading of feminism and lesbianism,
categorisations I aimed to avoid (p. 2), I shall return to them in subsection 4.3.1., since they
are closely related to Orlando’s cross-dressing, which is alluded to by Winterson through
Villanelle; consequently, I find themrelevant to include.
The way Woolf plots history, fantasy and reality in a blend juxtaposes fact with fiction on yet
another level and aids her in attempting to portray the diversity of the mind. Winterson
pastiches this expressive style and way of both disrupting foreseeable plots and of reflecting
an image of the mind. With it, one can travel freely in time, history and setting; speak with
those who are dead, change sex and walk on water; or simply be occupied with daily chores.
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Aalborg University
___________________________________________________________________________
There are no limits upon the mind, and Winterson fulfils Woolf’s hope for the plot to mirror
itself in this freedom. In The Passion, the integration of history challenges facts further as we
learn about the Napoleonic Wars from two perspectives, Henri’s and Villanelle’s, but where it
is also suggested that it might look entirely different from a third point of view, e.g. from
Napoleon’s own. She continues Woolf’s new way of portraying and experiencing history. The
integration of fantasy in The Passion additionally reveals allusions to fantasy elements in
Orlando. The allusion to Orlando’s sex-change leads to the assumption that Winterson
imitates and develops Woolf’s theory of androgyny, honouring its fruitful functions in a
homage pastiche. Furthermore, The Passion revealed to have two refrains connected to the
investigation of the allusion to Orlando’s heart, where the reader is recommended to take
chances in life and gamble one’s heart for passion. The two protagonists take such risks, but
they both end up alone, showing how it is a romance without a happy ending or conclusion.
A final genre to include here is poetry. It is placed at the end of this section, because it
leads to a mix of theme and expression, narrative and plot, allusion and pastiche, and to a
comprehensive example from Art & Lies, which I find relevant to include.
4.2.3. Poetry – Pastiching a Poetic Plot and Expression
In chapter three, Woolf’s inclusion of poetry in her writing, or at least an image of poetry, was
introduced, as a means to develop a new form of writing. The genre is reflected in Clarissa’s
hidden poetic spirit in Mrs Dalloway (Woolf 1996) and in Orlando’s passion for and writing
of poetry (Woolf 1993a), through which its importance is also underscored, as discussed in
relation to ‘the oak tree’-example. The poetic expression of Woolf’s writing style is created
through a focus on mind and moment over narrative continuity and plot, the latter also under
the impact of lyric poetry (p. 16), and through her play with words, such as rhymes,
repetitions, alliterations and a poetic word order, adding to the rhythm of her writing. My
claim is that Winterson pastiches this inclusion of poetry in her expression and plot.
Firstly, a similar play with words is found in her writing: “rougher, tougher” (Winterson
1996b: 26); “roam in packs like the cats and the rats” (ibid: 53); “Bigger Better Bomb” (ibid:
146); “my happily settled, happily happy Heidi house” (Winterson 1991b: 28). This is of
cause a very general parallel, but the authors’ use of repetition especially supports my claim
that Winterson pastiches Woolf’s poetic expression – or ‘tune’, as defined by Genette (p. 9).
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For instance, many ‘three-time’ repetitions are given in Orlando: “Hide! Hide! Hide!” (Woolf
1993a: 96); “Truth! Truth! Truth!” (ibid: 97); “never, never, never” (ibid: 168); “She wrote.
She wrote. She wrote” (ibid: 184); “Life, Life, Life!” (ibid: 188, 189); “A toy boat, a toy boat,
a toy boat” (ibid: 199); “flowering trees, flowering trees, flowering trees” (ibid: 215); but also
in Mrs Dalloway, reflecting the likelihood of it being a specific Woolfian trait: “rest, rest,
rest” (Woolf 1996: 71); “drip, drip, drip” (ibid: 105); “Evans, Evans, Evans” (ibid: 106);
“thud, thud, thud” (ibid: 133). Winterson alludes to this type of repetition in many of her
works: “wondrous, wondrous, wondrous” (Winterson 1991a: 41); “burned and burned and
burned” (Winterson 1995: 43f); “counting, counting counting” (ibid: 42); “hurled and hurled
and hurled” (ibid: 65); “Never Never Never“ (ibid: 130); “eventually eventually, eventually”
(Winterson 1991b: 16); “going to war and going to war and going to war” (Winterson 1996b:
134). These are just some of the many ‘three-time’ repetitions which sound not only in The
Passion, but throughout Winterson’s series of works, capturing and reflecting the tune of
Woolf’s writing, in a homage pastiche of her way of both placing rhythm in and breaking the
narrative flow.
Another interesting repetition in connection to poetry, and not least regarding Winterson’s
connection to modernism, is this following quotation from Written on the Body: “Freud didn’t
always get it right. Sometimes a breast is a breast is a breast” (1991b: 24). This is an allusion
to Gertrude Stein’s very famous poetic line; ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’, written in
1913, and combined with the allusions of Woolf’s ‘three-time’ repetition above, the allusion
emphasises Winterson’s connection to and homage pastiche of modernists and her attempt to
include and expand on their ways of ‘making it new’.
As presented in the final chapter (p. 17), Woolf advocated for writing to become more like
the other art forms, and Winterson alludes to this in her naming of her characters. In The
Passion, Henri and Villanelle allude to Henri Matisse, a famous French painter of the
twentieth century, and villanelle, a French poetic form from the nineteenth century,
respectively. To augment this point, similar allusions are found in the names of the three
protagonists in Art & Lies; Handel (George Frideric Handel, German composer of the
eighteenth century); Picasso (Pablo Picasso, twentieth century Spanish Cubist painter) and
Sappho (famous ancient Greek female poet). I will further explore the two names related to
poetry; Villanelle and Sappho.
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Aalborg University
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Starting with The Passion, Villanelle’s name is also the name of a French poetic form, which
adopted its name from Italy (where the character is also from). One specific characteristic of
the form is that two refrains are repeated in and conclude the poem (www3). As discovered
earlier, there are many refrains sounding throughout The Passion, and following the latter
villanelle characteristic, one of them also concludes the novel; “I’m telling you stories. Trust
me” (Winterson 1996b: 160). Thus, she reflects inspiration from lyric poetry, as does Woolf.
Where the latter breaks the narrative with shifts of focalizers and stream-of-consciousness (p.
15), Winterson shifts between narrators and fragments the narrative flow more graphically,
parting her text into sections from just one to several lines. The many sections allow her to not
only jump between narrators, but also between time and settings, and some of these sections
are of great importance, as discussed in relation to Henri’s narrative. For instance:
[…] madness would throw her noose around your neck and lead you into the
dark woods where the rivers are polluted and the birds are silent.
When I say I lived with heartless men, I use the word correctly.
As the weeks wore on, we talked about going home […]
(Winterson 1996b: 83)
Henri jumps from past to present and back to past tense, breaking his retrospective narration
and indicating his presence to the reader. Furthermore, such breaks of one line make them
stand out, underscoring here the heartless nature of the war Henri participated in and, as
mentioned in relation to his insanity, greatly comes to despise. By alluding to characteristics
of poetry in plot and narrative structures, Winterson shows her engagement in Woolf’s
advocacy for more artistic writing as a tool to develop writing further.
The other name Winterson uses, and which alludes to poetry, is Sappho. She does not appear
in The Passion, but in Art & Lies, which is also the one novel in which Woolf is directly
referred to by her name.
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Aalborg University
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I find it symbolic when Sappho turns up as one of three main characters in Winterson’s Art &
Lies. In New Statesman 1920, commenting on her essay, The Intellectual Status of Women
(1920), Woolf considers the conditions for women through the example of Sappho - a famous,
female ancient Greek poet with more social and domestic freedom than was common, not
confined to harem or by strict discipline, well educated and expressive – all conditions aiding
the development of lyric poetry (Woolf 1979: 6f). “[…] I have often been told that Sappho
was a woman, and […] Plato and Aristotle placed her with Homer and Archilocus among the
greatest of their poets” (ibid: 56). Hence, Sappho is a cultural icon for Woolf and becomes
symbolic for the inclusion of poetry, for free female writing and female success. Winterson’s
chapters with Sappho as the first-person narrator are entitled “Sappho”, i.e. a paratext
indicating Sappho’s story as the main topic and alluding to the symbolism of Woolf’s
inclusion of Sappho.
The symbolism of Sappho is embraced and developed by Winterson. Her character,
Sappho, is a lesbian poet who speaks of love, poetry, bluntly of sex (Winterson 1995: 51f)
and criticises marriage: “Why chaste marriage? Is there nothing else?” (ibid: 58). In Sexing
the Cherry, Winterson integrates Sappho as well, who in that novel poetically turns her body
into a bird out of love (Winterson 1991a: 39). So, Winterson creates a character who
personifies the symbolism Woolf attached to Sappho, being a free spirited woman, openly
displaying her opinions, something Woolf attempted in her essays but only hinted in her
novels.
Additionally, the name Sappho offers the association to ‘Sapphism’, which is homosexual
love between women, and this is enhanced by the character Sappho’s homosexuality. Hereby,
Sappho also comes to represent love between women, which unavoidably calls to mind
Woolf’s and Winterson’s own love for women.
Supporting my claim of an intertextual reference in relation to Sappho is a direct reference
to Woolf: “All art belongs to the same period. […] Who calls whom? Sappho to Mrs Woolf –
Mrs Woolf to Sappho. The Over-and-Out across time, the two-way radio on a secret
frequency. Art defeats Time” (Winterson 1995: 67). Winterson here ranks Woolf alongside
Sappho as a successful artist and as she claims art to surpass time, so will Woolf’s pertinence.
The art of writing is a two-way communication only detectable and approachable for artists.
Thus, the allusion to Sappho here has the effect of paying homage in a pastiche of Woolf, the
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Aalborg University
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purpose of pastiche proposed by Hoesterey (p. 8). Consequently, this also suggests that
Winterson communicates with Woolf, thus positioning herself as an artist. Furthermore, it is
in agreement with Woolf’s statement that famous women have been before her, when
Winterson here honours the famous women before her.
A final allusion to Woolf through the character Sappho is found in a critique of the
biographer, albeit Sappho is more direct than Woolf’s earlier mentioned parody of the genre:
“The biographer, hand on heart, violates the past. The biographer, grave robber and body
snatcher, trading in sensational dust, while the living spirit slips away” (Winterson 1995:
140). This again alludes to Woolf’s advocation for writing to convey the spirit, which a list of
supposed facts does not achieve. Considering the allusion to Woolf, combined with an urge
for writing to deal with the “living spirit”, it could be argued that Winterson here presents a
paradox by being a “grave robber” herself, digging up the remains of Woolf and incorporating
them in her writing. Such argument would further suggest an ulterior motive of her pastiche,
namely stealing Woolf’s thunder. Whether this is the case is discussed further in the final
chapter, but for now, I maintain that the purpose is to pay homage.
Woolf integrates poetry in both her thematic and stylistic expression, and Winterson imitates
both of these. She attains rhythm and breaks in the sentence by imitating Woolf’s word plays,
in particular ‘three-time’ repetitions. Furthermore, Woolf’s poetic plot structure, achieved
through narrative breaks and reflections of the mind, is also achieved by Winterson from
similar, though augmented, narrative methods, and she points directly to such poetic structure
by alluding to the villanelle structure through the naming of her character in The Passion.
Thus, Winterson imitates Woolf’s inclusion of poetry in her expressive style, which is
magnified by the other important allusive name in relation to poetry, Sappho, who also
presents poetry as a theme. Sappho in Art & Lies both evokes and embodies the symbolism
assigned to the name by Woolf, i.e. poetry and female writing, progress and success. I find
that Winterson’s Woolfian use of Sappho parallels her Woolfian use of the novel genre.
Similar to how she displayed and expanded the Sappho symbol, she displays and expands
Woolf’s novelistic style, i.e. displaying and expanding the novel’s move towards new
language, new narration, new or no plot and new subject matter, unrestricted by conventions.
Moreover, the name is set in relation to Woolf’s in a textual example, its function being to pay
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Aalborg University
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homage to Woolf as a great female writer, similarly to the ancient Greek poetess, and as
influential to literary development.
By incorporating allusions to Woolf and other famous and former real life artists in her
fiction, Winterson pastiches Woolf’s claim that “[…] books continue each other” (p. 13) and
therefore, that a writer should be considered as a descendant of former writers in the light of
what she “[…] inherits of their characteristics and restrictions” (Woolf 1993b: 73). Thus,
through this pastiche, Winterson claims herself such a descendant, which is also supported by
her treatment of time, discussed in 4.3.3., suggesting the future only to be possible because of
the past. In this relation, I find another parallel to Winterson’s deployment of the Sappho
symbolism. As mentioned, Sappho was a cultural icon for Woolf, and in line with the above,
Woolf seems to be a cultural icon for Winterson, representing the best from the modernist era,
who has had an enormous impact on the progress of not only writing but also of women’s
position in society. Hence, it is also an acknowledgement of the power of the cultural sphere
upon the private and the public.
The imitation of Woolf’s thematic and expressive style is part of a homage pastiche of
Woolf’s inspiration and versatile approach to literature, valuing the qualities of other art
forms. Through this pastiche and by restating that “there’s only art and lies” (69, 141),
Winterson follows Woolf’s prophesy that “[The novel] will become, more than at present, a
work of art like any other” (p. 17).
4.2.4. In Sum
As pointed out earlier, Woolf advocates a disruption of plot conventions, hoping that they
eventually disappear and leave writers to express themselves freely – unlimited by
conventions. Her initiative with renewing plot is fuelled by her wish for writing to portray the
spirit and an image of the complex mind. Attempting to reach this goal, she writes in an
expressive style, mixed by the genres of reality, history, fantasy and poetry as well as
experiments with time. Thereby, she indirectly questions facts and portrayals of history and
manages to foreground feelings and experiences as governors of the plot. However, Woolf
was under strong influence of the tradition and patriarchal norms of her time, putting a natural
limit to just how unconventional her novels could be and leading to the discrepancies between
her advocacies for progress and the actualisation of these in her novels. Thus, her stories are
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Aalborg University
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led by one narrator and her characters conform to patriarchal norms in the end, showing how
these influences withheld her from telling the truth about her passions (p. 14) and therefore
also from reflecting them freely in her novels. Nonetheless, she put forth her visions of a
further liberation of writing in her essays, and Winterson pastiches Woolf’s expressive style
by both alluding to Woolf’s texts and her essays, i.e. the possibilities of her texts, using the
phrase from Hutcheon’s definition of pastiche (p. 8).
In The Passion, Winterson attains a similar stylistic expression, mixing historical facts and
fantasy, imitating the inclusion of poetry and questioning of facts. However, these factors are
expanded by Winterson. The naming of Villanelle augments the inspiration from lyric poetry,
while the parallel plotting of Henri and Villanelle augments the juxtaposition of historical
facts and fantasy. Moreover, her characters’ descriptions of facts and history as subjective
instances urge the reader even more than Woolf to think of history in a new way and question
those who claim to know the facts. Winterson broadens this with her complex plotting of
Henri’s and Villanelle’s intertwined narratives, of which the former seems superior, and by
alluding to Woolf’s portrayal of insanity in regards to Henri’s; this primary narrator’s
trustworthiness is under attack, problematising the whole novel. So, Winterson pastiches the
possibilities of Woolf’s texts, continuing her questioning of facts more directly, disabling not
only the truth-value of facts but also of fiction, suggesting that they are two sides to the same
coin. Very aptly, Henri’s and thus the novel’s final words are as mentioned: “I’m telling you
stories. Trust me” (Winterson 1996b: 160).
The indirect vs. direct portrayal of the fact/fiction paradox is thus an image of the two
authors’ writing styles, where Woolf felt restricted to be indirect about some of her visions for
the renewal of writing, at least in her fiction, and Winterson more bluntly expresses Woolf’s
style and visions. Moreover, the image is also of Winterson’s pastiche of Woolf, since she
echoes Woolf’s stylistic expressions and takes it a step further, fulfilling the vision and
possibilities of Woolf’s texts and the progress for future writing that she circuitously
advocated for.
The title of The Passion suggests how Winterson, unlike Woolf, is not afraid of
expressing herself freely. Her characters follow their passions and gamble their hearts, which
is seen in connection to an allusion to Orlando’s heart, albeit they end up alone. Where Woolf
hinted unhappy romance (having her characters conform to passionless marriages) and the
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Aalborg University
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possibility of not marrying or even taking a partner, Winterson displays this directly as
acceptable. It is a game one must keep on playing. Furthermore, Woolf’s fascination with
Sappho as a cultural icon, symbolising poetry and female success, takes up a role in Art &
Lies, embodying the symbolism, suggesting Woolf herself to be a cultural icon and stressing
that art(ists) defeats time.
As Genette states, pastiche is the imitation of an author’s style, which involves imitating the
unity between the author’s expression and content; his/her vision – what Hutcheon in other
words described as the possibilities of texts (2.2.). I have claimed that Winterson pastiches
Woolf’s style, imitating her expression as well as augmenting it. This claim is mainly based
on the analysis of The Passion, by focussing on narration, metafiction, storytelling and genremixing. The treatment of the fact/fiction paradox within these four categories is a means for
Winterson to capture and keep the readers attention, challenge his/her engagement and affect
him/her to be critical of facts and embrace the spiritual experience offered by storytelling. By
pastiching Woolf, who is known to advocate for alterations in writing, Winterson evokes the
connotation of renewal in her own writing. Therefore, the incitement to question the facts
offered by Henri, Villanelle, the third-person narrator, diaries, history and real life reflect an
advocation by Winterson for alteration within writing conventions and for a generally more
critical approach in life to imposements of convention. That is, the reader should question the
state of things, which is the first step towards alterations. Woolf questioned the state of things,
as is expressed through the paradoxes she deals with, and Winterson pastiches this expression.
However, following Genette’s definition of pastiche and to support my claim of its
existence in the Winterson-Woolf relation, it is necessary to further investigate Winterson’s
treatment of the themes Woolf unites with her expression. As presented in chapter three and
as earlier discussed in the present chapter, the themes of Woolf’s texts are expressed as
paradoxes under the heading of fact and fiction, and I have already touched upon a few of
these. As I continue with an investigation of contentual imitation, I rely on allusions, as these
various passing references of different natures, as defined by Abrams, echoing a past source
and its original intentions, as explained by Hutcheon (p. 10), help to reveal intertextual
references to Woolf in Winterson’s work.
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Aalborg University
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4.3. Pastiching Woolf’s Thematic Style
As just described, a complete investigation of pastiche involves looking into the expression
and content of the pastiched text, and after having investigated the former, I now turn to the
latter, which, in Genette’s words, means identifying the thematic features of the imitated
corpus (p. 9). Woolf’s texts touch upon a great number of themes and, in relation to some of
these, paradoxes, and therefore the investigation of Winterson’s pastiche of Woolf continues
with analyses of allusions to some of these themes in The Passion. Previously, I have
addressed the themes of fact and fiction, poetry, sex, gender and identity, since expressive and
thematic styles unavoidably overlap. However, I continue here with the themes of crossdressing (again touching upon gender and identity), marriage and time, which I find to be
grand themes in Woolf’s fiction and non-fiction pastiched by Winterson.
4.3.1. The Allusion to Cross-Dressing
The first theme I address here, and which reveals Winterson’s pastiche of Woolf’s thematic
expression of androgyny, is cross-dressing. As mentioned, a paradox emerges from the
juxtaposition of Woolf’s feminist statements with her theory of androgyny. This theory is
manifested in Orlando’s sex change and following cross-dressing, disclaiming any impact of
sex on perceptions of identity and gender (p. 14-15). As discussed earlier, Winterson alludes
to the sex change and takes it further by making it realistic and trivial. She also alludes to the
cross-dressing and broadens its effect.
After Orlando’s sex change, she repeatedly cross-dresses, and hereby “[…] the pleasures
of life were increased and its experiences multiplied. For the probity of breeches she
exchanged the seductiveness of petticoats and enjoyed the love of both sexes equally” (Woolf
1993a: 153). Elaborating on cross-dressing, the narrator states that “[…] often it is only the
clothes that keep the male and female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite
of what it is above” (ibid: 133). Through these and more examples, Woolf expresses how an
androgynous perception of gender and identity is profitable, combining the most desired
qualities of both sexes. In The Passion, Villanelle also repeatedly cross-dresses as a boy
(Winterson 1996b: 54) and asks: “Was this breeches and boots self any less real than my
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Aalborg University
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garters?” (ibid: 66). Thus, in a similar reference to clothing, Villanelle suggests that her male
and female qualities are equal, alluding to Woolf’s portrayal of androgynous identity. Where
cross-dressing allowed Orlando to perform both genders and enjoy their qualities, Jordan in
Sexing the Cherry expands the purpose of cross-dressing to be a flight from the negative
qualities of one’s gender as well, when explaining how he has “[…] met a number of people
who, anxious to be free of the burdens of their gender, have dressed themselves men as
women and women as men” (Winterson 1991a: 31). Combining Woolf’s positive approach
with a negative one, cross-dressing is a way for Winterson to criticise stereotypical
perceptions of gender. The ease with which Winterson’s characters shift between performing
as male and female normalises cross-dressing, as it did sex-changing, and alludes to Woolf’s
theory of androgyny and contributes to taking it a step further.
Orlando’s ‘equal love’ of both sexes indicates that love too is androgynous, and this is
also hinted in the beginning of Orlando, where he experiences unconditional desire for a
Russian princess, even though he at first was oblivious to her gender; “[…] a figure, which,
whether boy’s or woman’s, […] filled him with the highest curiosity” (Woolf 1993a: 26).
This hint of androgynous love by Woolf is echoed by Winterson as her characters; crossdressers, male, female and androgynous, live out their passions for each other without
assigning their sex or gender any importance. For instance, Villanelle has both male and
female partners, who desire her with or without her boy clothing, and in Written on the Body,
the narrator’s sex remains unknown, which forces such androgynous thinking upon the reader,
as the narrator describes multiple love relations to individuals of both sexes. These examples
suggest love to be solely dependant upon identity, not prioritising hetero-, homo- or even
bisexuality. Thus, the allusion to Woolf’s symbolism of clothes, disrupting the binary
opposition between genders determined by sex and suggesting androgynous love, is
augmented by Winterson, reflecting more directly on her reader the theory of androgyny.
As contemplated by Hutcheon (p. 10), the reading of an allusion means recognising the
echo from a past source, its original intentions and deducing its meaning. By turning to crossdressing in her treatment of genders, Winterson echoes Woolf’s project and expresses that she
still finds it relevant. However, while the theme was aimed by Woolf at generally equalising
genders, its effect in Winterson’s time is removing the focus from gender all together. In her
more direct portrayal of androgyny, Winterson again challenges the reader - this time to
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Aalborg University
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approach writing, love and life without fixating on gender, sex or sexuality. While achieving
to force this androgynous experience upon her reader, especially in Written on the Body,
many scholars and literary critics have been affected in the opposite direction. Fixating on
discovering the gender of the narrator, they search the novel for gender characteristics, which
simultaneously reflects a tradition of understanding from a gendered point of view. This way,
Winterson provokes a reaction that proves Woolf’s prediction that “[i]ndeed it will be a long
time still, I think, before a woman can sit down to write a book without finding a phantom to
be slain, a rock to be dashed against” (Woolf 1929: 62). She foresaw that traditional,
stereotypical and patriarchal perceptions would continue to infect women’s writing.
Though the themes of cross-dressing and androgyny invite an elaborate discussion of the
themes of sex, gender and sexuality, I avoid these subjects further, as also described in the
Introduction, and turn to other central themes alluded to by Winterson.
4.3.2. Pastiching the Theme of Marriage
As discussed in chapter three, marriage is a theme about which the both/and positioning of
Woolf is quite clear. She enters into marriage herself, as do her protagonists in Mrs Dalloway
and Orlando, although they resisted so at first. However, she also criticises the institution of
marriage in her essays, states that a writer cannot flourish while married and has affairs with
women. In this paradox of both criticising and conforming to marital conventions, the critique
carries more weight than the conformity. Woolf’s characters seem forced into their marriages
by the spirit of the ages, and by also being adulterous in her own, she thereby reflects
discontent with the institution of marriage. Winterson pastiches Woolf’s critique, not only by
keeping out of marriage herself, but also by releasing Woolf’s underlying discontent by
criticising the institution of marriage directly in The Passion.
The theme of marriage is introduced early in The Passion: “St Paul said it is better to
marry than to burn, but my mother taught me it is better to burn than to marry” (Winterson
1996b: 9). This rather macabre description of marriage follows Villanelle’s experience of it.
Her account of getting married and travelling away with a man to escape her feelings for a
woman is interrupted by a third-person narrator, as also mentioned in 4.2.1., who tells the
story of Salvadore. Salvadore offers his heart in a box to a young woman, who is on the run,
and he asks for hers in return. “But she couldn’t because she was not travelling with her heart,
it was beating in another place” (ibid: 98). The story is an image of how also Villanelle travels
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Aalborg University
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without her heart, since, as also discussed earlier, it is stored with her ex-lover, and reflects
that she entered into marriage without heart and love. Furthermore, she also ends up being on
the run after robbing and abandoning her husband. Ultimately, he tracks her down, and she
only survives this reunion because Henri kills him. In fact, if Winterson’s characters do not
avoid the institution of marriage all together or disrespect it through adultery (as Woolf did),
they escape them through killings. For instance, in Sexing the Cherry, a fairytale about 12
princesses marrying 12 princes becomes 12 ways of escaping marriage – over half of them
through murder (Winterson 1991a: 47ff). These examples reflect the constant disturbance
portrayed in relation to marriage in Winterson’s works, urging the reader to also question this
convention. The metaphorical killings by Winterson of the conventions of marriage allude to
Woolf’s metaphorical killing of ‘the angel of the house’, pastiching Woolf’s critique by
taking it a step further.
4.3.3. Pastiching the Theme of Time
A reoccurring theme in both Woolf’s and Winterson’s works is time, and what I briefly
address here is how time as a theme contributes to a renewal of the novel genre. As
mentioned, time is used as device to complicate narrative and plot, e.g. through shifts between
characters’ past and present experiences in Mrs Dalloway and, to a higher extent, in The
Passion. This way, time is a tool to portray an image of the mind, in which experiences do not
happen chronologically. The narrator in Orlando addresses the time theme in this relation; a
narrator who as mentioned juxtaposes a historical time of five centuries with a body time of
only two decades. He points to the “[…] extraordinary discrepancy between the time on the
clock and the time of the mind” (Woolf 1993a: 68): “An hour, once it lodges in the queer
element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on
the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one
second” (ibid.). This abstract definition partly describes the time perspective in Orlando; the
400 years is an image of the range of his mind and spirit contrasted with bodily time which
contrarily might seem shorter than reality. This reflects the possibilities in writing and
storytelling induced by a focus on the complex mind and a disruption of time.
References to the clock are central in both Orlando and Mrs Dalloway, the latter whose
original title aptly was “The Hours”. I give a few examples of how Winterson uses such
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references similarly to Woolf. In Orlando, a detailed description of the clock striking
functions as a transition between two chapters: “[…] the first stroke of midnight sounded.
[…] With the twelfth stroke of midnight, the darkness was complete. […] The Eighteenth
century was over; the Nineteenth century had begun” (ibid: 155f). Winterson uses this same
devise in her transition from one year to the next, from the second to the third chapter in The
Passion: “The Moors on the great clock swing back their hammers and strike in turn […] It is
New Years Day, 1805” (Winterson 1996b: 76). In relation to this clock striking, Villanelle
explains how “[t]ime stops. Hearts beat” (ibid.) – an effect by the clock also described by Mrs
Dalloway: “[…] an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they
said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed” (Woolf 1996: 3). So,
though both authors experiment with time and disturb chronology when displaying
experiences of the mind, they acknowledge the power of the clock, which is also imaged in
the solid symbols of Big Ben and The Moors2 – symbols of London and Venice, the settings
in the novels. Addresses to the clock stress the present, and while such addresses are
reoccurring in Mrs Dalloway and Orlando, Winterson places focus on the present by
addressing it through her characters. In The Passion, Henri is enlightened by his friend that
“[…] every moment you steal from the present is a moment you have lost for ever. There’s
only now” (Winterson 1996b: 29). Furthermore, Villanelle considers how “[…] the future is
only possible because of the past. […] There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in
dreaming. Thus the present is made rich. Thus the present is made whole” (ibid: 62). To
enrich one’s life is to explore the present in mind, spirit and dreams, where time is unlimited
and free of charge. As Winterson writes on her web page; “[t]here is more to life than living it
as quickly and as cheaply as possible. To me, that’s not living life at all” (www2), i.e. truly to
live is taking one’s time in the present, which she, like Woolf, reminds her reader of through
the centering of time. However, this does not mean that one should forget, but rather
acknowledge the past and its honour in the present – the present owes the past to remember,
because it is past experiences that make us who we are. This also parallels both Woolf’s and
Winterson’s homage to their predecessors, making the path smooth and regulating their steps.
The Moors are famous parts of the bell in The St Mark’s Clock, St Mark’s Square in Venice – claimed the
second most famous clock in the world after Big Ben (www1).
2
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Aalborg University
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The themes of cross-dressing, marriage and time add to the earlier arguments of thematic
imitation. By imitating Woolf’s thematic features and their possibilities, hence taking them a
step further in a pastiche, Winterson influences the reader to critically consider the nature of
facts, fiction, marriage and gender differentiation; to ponder the influence of the past and the
present upon one’s life and the possibility of androgynous identity and love; and, along with a
similar expressive style, delivers the experience of a poetic plot structure of a novel genre in
which the only dependable feature is the telling of stories.
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Aalborg University
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5. CONCLUSION
In this thesis, I set out to investigate Jeanette Winterson’s fascination with Virginia Woolf and
how this fascination was detectable in and fruitful to Winterson’s writing. In this chapter, I
evaluate the investigation conducted in the previous three chapters, beginning with the
intertextual terms, followed by my findings, Winterson’s purpose of pastiche and finally,
possible (dis)agreements with critics.
I mainly focused on Winterson’s The Passion in a comparative and retrospective analysis of
Winterson’s relation to Woolf. In order to do so, I relied mainly on the intertextual concepts
of allusion and pastiche, which were defined in chapter two. Allusion was defined as a
passing reference, which is interpreted, according to Linda Hutcheon, by recognising it as an
echo from the past, its original intentions and meaning in the alluding text. The revelation of
allusions also revealed the connection from Winterson to Woolf and thereby contributed to
the investigation of pastiche. As mentioned, the definitions of pastiche have their limitations,
and I combined the statements from Gérard Genette, Ingeborg Hoesterey and Hutcheon into a
mixed definition. Pastiche is imitation of style, of the combined thematic and stylistic features
of an author’s work, of a vision and of the tune under the words. However, when speaking of
a work as a pastiche, these definitions seem to refer to the entire work being a pastiche, and
neither The Passion nor other of Winterson’s works can be said to fit such definition. These
versions alone therefore limit the amount of instances in which one can deduce a pastiche.
However, it is defined as a genre, and when I speak of Winterson’s pastiche of Woolf, it is
meant as an integration of it in her writing. Hutcheon broadened the definition of pastiche
further to be imitation of the indefinite possibilities of texts. This is rather vague, but very
useful, since, aside from integrating imitations of Woolf’s stylistic and thematic features,
Winterson has shown to take these features, and in that Woolf’s project, a step further.
Aside from the intertextual terms, it was necessary to outline Woolf’s project, as done in
chapter three. Woolf attempted to ‘make it new’ by prioritising mind, spirit and experience
over plot and characterisation. In such an attempt, the methods of stream-of-consciousness, a
genre-mix of biography, reality, history, fantasy and poetry and the juxtaposition of fact and
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Aalborg University
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fiction were implemented, but they only partly assisted Woolf in reaching her priorities due to
conventions of her time. Thereby, Woolf’s project was marked by a series of paradoxes,
concerning sex, writing, marriage, lesbianism and feminism as well as complexities of mixed
traditions, making her that much more interesting, but also difficult to outline. My choice of
mixing Woolf’s fiction, non-fiction and statements from critics in this outline resulted in a
blend of examples from different novels and opinions from different essays and critics,
possibly making the outline sketchy, caused by a wish to include a variety of information on
few pages. Nonetheless, it encompassed a sufficient amount of material for me to investigate
Winterson’s intertextual referencing to Woolf.
The investigation in chapter four was governed by pastiche, which was imitation of both
expression and content, stylistic and thematic features, supplemented with analyses of
allusions. In order to investigate a possible imitation in Winterson’s writing to Woolf stylistic
and thematic features, I began with a focus on the two authors’ narrative and plot methods,
which also added to the overall understanding of The Passion. This was executed mainly with
the paradox of fact and fiction in focus, along with Woolf’s wish for writers to display the
spirit and what she called the trivial, fantastic and evanescent impressions of the mind, aspects
she prioritised over plot and characterisation. As a part of pastiche, Winterson imitates and
augments Woolf’s expressive style in her complication of narrative and plot structure in The
Passion and achieves such expression by imitating Woolf’s priorities. In The Passion, shifts
between narrators lead to a distinguished layering of stories, jumps between past and present
experiences and to a complex indication of Henri as the main narrator. Henri’s narrative, and
thus indirectly The Passion as a whole, is strongly questioned as Winterson follows Woolf’s
stylistic and thematic juxtaposition of fact and fiction.
Where Woolf indirectly questioned facts and placed focus on fiction by parodying the
biography genre through a metafictional narrator in Orlando, who also disrupted historical
and bodily time, Winterson does so through her characters’ more direct metafiction and
descriptions of facts (memories, history, diaries and other written accounts) as subjective and
fictional. Thereby, not only facts but also fiction, i.e. The Passion, are questioned – indicating
that they are both unstable entities in need of critical assessment and possibly also of change.
Adding to this complexity of fact and fiction are the refrain, “I’m telling you stories. Trust
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Aalborg University
___________________________________________________________________________
Me”, and the allusions to Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Septimus’ insanity in Mrs
Dalloway. The allusions hint to Henri’s insanity and role as a writer throughout the story,
again questioning his trustworthiness, and echo Woolf’s famous essay, her opinions expressed
in it and her description of and experiences with insanity. This is part of a homage pastiche,
evoking and respecting Woolf’s writing, which contributes to Winterson’s disruption of
narrative and plot in The Passion, reflecting that the novel genre too is untrustworthy.
Winterson also imitates and augments the adventurous expressive style that Woolf’s
writing portrays through the mixing of history and fantasy. Like Woolf, Winterson plots
historical events, settings and characters against fantasy elements, portraying history in a new
way and reminding the reader of the subjective nature of any kind of story. The fantasy
elements amplify the focus on storytelling, and Winterson’s parallel plotting of the two
protagonists’ experiences of the same war in The Passion augments the fictional nature of
history, writing and experiences. By augmenting Woolf’s expressive style in The Passion,
Winterson thereby incites her reader to question conventional and authoritarian versions of
facts.
Supporting my claim that Winterson imitates Woolf‘s genre-mix were the allusions to the
fantasy elements of Orlando’s heart and sex change. The former reflects how Villanelle and
Henri gamble their hearts for love and passion, but both lose and end up alone. This way,
Winterson takes it a step further than Woolf dared to, as she was afraid to truly express her
passions in her writing and had her characters conform in the end, only indicating with open
endings that they might be unhappy ones. Winterson portrays how romances do not always
end well, but nonetheless, the refrains ‘What you risk reveals what you value’ and ‘You play,
you win, you play, you lose. ‘You play’ suggests that life is about gambling just the same.
The allusions to Orlando’s sex-change and cross-dressing display an imitation of thematic
stylistics and visibly also the influence of Woolf’s theory of androgyny on Winterson’s
writing. By augmenting the theory through a normalisation of the two actions in Boating for
Beginners and The Passion, respectively, and through an androgynous narrator in Written on
the Body, Winterson trivialises sex and gender and portrays clearly the androgynous quality of
identity and love that Woolf suggested. Thus, she enforces Woolf’s theory and thereby
challenges gender stereotypes and forces the reader to relate to and consider gender politics in
a Woolfian way.
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Aalborg University
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Aside from imitating the expressive style of Woolf’s retelling of history mixed with fantasy
and subjectivity, Winterson imitates Woolf’s inclusion of poetic devises in her sentences and
plot structure. She imitates Woolf’s ‘three-time’ repetitions and breaks in the narrative, giving
way for enhanced moments of the characters’ thoughts and experiences. The influence of lyric
poetry on the plot is supported by Henri’s co-character, Villanelle, whose name alludes to a
French poetic structure in which the use of refrains is a characteristic. As was shown, many
refrains sound in The Passion, and following the villanelle, the refrain ‘I’m telling you stories.
Trust me’ aptly concludes Winterson’s novel, leaving the reader with an open and ambiguous
ending. This adds to the fictional nature of The Passion and to an implied questioning of the
novel genre in general.
My claim that Winterson pastiches Woolf’s inclusion of poetry was supported by an
allusion in Art & Lies. The ancient Greek poetess, Sappho, was to Woolf a cultural icon,
symbolising poetry, female writing and female success, and as a character in Winterson’s
novel she impersonated the Woolfian symbolism of Sappho. With the allusion, Winterson
suggests Woolf to be a cultural icon and that art(ists) defeats time, again affirming Woolf’s
relevance and revealing her fascination. One of Sappho’s expressed opinions was a critique of
the institution of marriage, which was also seen in The Passion and other of Winterson’s
novels. Where Woolf paradoxically both criticised and conformed to marriage, she is
nonetheless famous for claiming to have killed the Victorian woman phantom, ‘the angel of
the house’. Winterson subscribes to this view and takes it a step further, figuratively killing
the institution of marriage by having the majority of her characters avoid, disrespect or kill
their way out of the institution of marriage.
A final theme I briefly addressed was time. Winterson uses, like Woolf, though more
experimental with her narrators’ deployment of tenses, the aspect of time to broaden the
possibilities of plot structure and reshape historical events from different perspectives.
Moreover, she alludes to Woolf’s foregrounding of the clock, placing focus on the present and
the power of time. In this connection, Winterson portrays through her characters the
importance of acknowledging and living in the present while acknowledging the honour of the
past in it.
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Aalborg University
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I concluded in the investigation that Winterson pastiches Woolf’s style by imitating and/or
augmenting her stylistic and thematic features and conducted an analysis of The Passion to
show Winterson’s step forward from Woolf’s writing. Where Woolf was restricted by
tradition in her way of ‘making it new’, giving way to a number of paradoxes, Winterson does
so freely and either resolves these paradoxes by expressing directly what Woolf could not, or
exploit and develop them as she does with the fact/fiction juxtaposition. The result is a novel
with a parallel, fused and poetically inspired plot, genre-mixing, an open and romantically
unhappy ending, naturalised cross-dressing and androgynous love. Furthermore, it conveys
the messages that one should take risks for the sake of passion and that tales from the past as
well as the present, whether in the guise of historical or personal facts or of fiction, as the
novel itself, are to be approached critically. The reader can no longer foresee what will
happen in a story or expect incidents according to novel conventions. The only aspect for
readers to trust is that they are being told stories.
The Woolf – Winterson relation has primarily been considered an isolated case, but many of
Woolf’s stylistic traits were simultaneously explored by other modernists, especially James
Joyce and T. S. Eliot, and have been taken up by others than Winterson. Therefore, some of
the above similarities and expansions are shared by other writers as well, and while it is of
course not possible to generalise Winterson’s project from an analysis of The Passion alone, I
find that, when combined with the other examples, my thesis is an indication of the unique
intertextual relation, its function and possible presence in her other works. Moreover,
Winterson shows additional interest in Woolf as a critic, in editing the republications of her
novels and on her personal web-page (www2), where she until recently had an entire site
dedicated to Woolf and her writing3. However, as was also initiated in the previous chapter,
one must question Winterson’s motives for her pastiche of Woolf.
I see three possible motives for Winterson’s deployment of the pastiche genre. First of all, it
might be that she genuinely finds the integration of Woolfian stylistics beneficial for her own
writing project. Elements of the identified pastiche, e.g. androgyny, prose-poetry blend and
3
July 2008, Winterson has renewed her web page and seemingly removed the Woolfian section. This move
away from Woolf, can not be said to back my thesis, nonetheless, her hitherto activity with Woolf outside of her
writing is indisputable.
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Aalborg University
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allusions to Woolf’s portrayal of insanity, contribute to a complication of Winterson’s
narrative and plot, challenging both the reader’s trust in the narratives, in Henri in particular,
in The Passion and in the novel genre in general and the readers’ following of the plot – a
challenge Winterson, as mentioned, prioritises in her writing. Woolf ‘made it new’ by setting
progress in motion, ceaselessly addressing relevant subjects, hinting hidden desires and
touching upon modernist taboos, and Winterson turns these taboos her postmodern subject.
In relation to the above, the second possible purpose of pastiche is to pay homage, a
purpose theorised by Hoesterey as well and one that I have maintained throughout the
analysis. I have claimed that Winterson pays homage to Woolf for her attempt at ‘making it
new’ while restricted by conventions of her time, e.g. for her centering of the characters, their
thoughts and feelings, her theory of androgyny and questioning of societal and literary
conventions. Such homage was especially expressed through allusions to Woolf’s texts and
essays. The allusions to for instance the sex change, cross-dressing, Septimus, descriptions of
time and A Room of One’s Own echo Woolf’s project, and in that Winterson makes sure that
Woolf is not forgotten – was it ever a risk. In addition, she evokes her predecessor directly by
name in Art & Lies, pointing to Woolf as a descendant of and equal to the great Greek poetess
Sappho while suggesting herself a descendant of Woolf in the process.
However, the formalistic perspective in Winterson’s return to Woolf also leads to a third
possible purpose of pastiche, which is rather a sociological perspective of stealing Woolf’s
thunder. I consider it a combination. Based on the nature of the pastiche, Winterson reflects
comprehensive understanding of and sympathetic insight into Woolf’s project, an
understanding and insight underscoring the purpose of paying homage. However, the pastiche
is also comprehensive. As mentioned, she indicates herself a descendant of Woolf in the line
of great writers and the intertextual referencing ranges beyond examples discussed here and
beyond Winterson’s fiction, as she occupies herself with Woolf in her criticism, editing and
on her web page. If the sole purpose was to pay homage, it could have been done to a much
lesser extent and still be noticeable, considering Woolf’s influence and popularity, which is
why I suspect Winterson to attach a positive connotation to both her writing and person
through her overt preoccupation with Woolf.
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Aalborg University
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With reference to the Introduction, I have found to agree with Susana Onega, who points out
that Winterson has turned out as the kind of woman writer Woolf predicted would appear, as
Winterson attempts to capture life in all its complexities and releases the Woolfian restriction,
writing opinions and beliefs freely and writing not only fiction, but other genres as well.
However, though my claim of pastiche is based on imitations of expressive and thematic
features, I do not agree that she, as also claimed, copies modernist routine opinions, since
these imitations were all combined with development and augmentation in new contexts.
Finally, my findings are in agreement with the statements of Lyn Pykett, who labels
Winterson a ‘post-Modernist’ rather than a postmodernist, finding it important to focus on
Winterson’s traces back to modernism and her continuation of the modernist project. I agree
with the importance of this trace, and that she takes it a step further, e.g. by augmenting
Woolf’s style, theory of androgyny and making modernist taboos into postmodernist subject
matter. However, rather than labelling Winterson a ‘post-Modernist’, I would say that
Winterson labels postmodernism to be ‘post-Modernist’, as she evokes modernism by
pastiching Woolf, paying homage not only to her, but to the modernist project and its impact
on postmodern writing as well, blurring the boundary between the two eras.
Woolf was discontent with the novel genre and predicted that “[…] it will become, more than
at present, a work of art like any other and its resources and its limitations will be explored”
(Woolf 1979: 51). So it has, as shown by Winterson, but her interest in a new novel
independent of gender, sexuality and literary conventions has yet to arrive. Winterson makes
an attempt as she reinvents Woolf’s initiative by taking it further and succeeds to a certain
extent. However, the general preoccupation with labelling the narrator in Written on the Body
as either male or female and with labelling Winterson as for instance a feminist or lesbian
writer shows how, though new and inventive, the novel still struggles to shake off gender and
sexual discriminations. As Woolf wrote in Professions for Women: “Indeed it will be a long
time still, I think, before a woman can sit down to write a book without finding a phantom to
be slain, a rock to be dashed against” (Woolf 1929: 62). As is the case with Woolf, so is the
case with Winterson; there are still conventions and criticisms haunting women’s writing.
Hence, Winterson does not mark the end of the Woolfian project.
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Aalborg University
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Aalborg University
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Aalborg University
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Aalborg University
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Abstract: An Intertextual Investigation of Virginia Woolf’s Influence on
Jeanette Winterson’s Project
This thesis is inspired by the question of why British author, Jeanette Winterson returns to
modernism - and in particular to Virginia Woolf – to renew her present. The aim is to
investigate how Winterson’s claimed fascination with Woolf is detectable in and fruitful to
her work, keeping in mind the two authors’ ways of ‘making it new’.
In order to conduct such investigation, intertextual terms are presented in a theoretical
chapter, where mainly ‘pastiche’ and ‘allusion’ as defined by Gérard Genette, Linda
Hutcheon and Ingeborg Hoesterey are discussed. Allusion is a passing reference to a person,
place, event, literary work or passage, and reading an allusion means noticing it as an echo
from the past, its original intentions and its meaning in the text of its occurrence. Detected
allusions in Winterson’s texts contribute to the investigation of pastiche, which is defined as
the imitation of an author’s idiosyncratic style, i.e. of both thematic and stylistic features, of
his/her vision and of the possibilities of the pastiched texts. A possible purpose of pastiche is
to pay homage to an admired author, and this is the connection made in this thesis from
Winterson’s texts to Woolf’s.
In a third chapter, Woolf’s writing project is outlined in a mix of textual examples from
her novels and statements from her non-fiction and from critics. This is necessary in order to
carry out the comparative analysis, revealing possible pastiche of and allusions to Woolf’s
writing in Winterson’s work. Woolf ‘makes it new’ by attempting to change the subject
matter and form of literature. In such an attempt she experiments with narrative methods and
plot structures and addresses relevant themes, such as sexuality, gender, identity, crossdressing, marriage, history, time, fact and fiction. The narrative method stream-ofconsciousness, a plot structure and expressive style inspired by poetry and the juxtaposition of
fact with fiction and history with fantasy all contribute to a revised perception of history, facts
and fiction and to the priority of spirit, mind and experience in the novel. In doing so, Woolf
was under the influence of societal and literary conventions; conventions she claimed
restricted writers of her time and which put a limit to the range of her experiment. Thereby, a
number of paradoxes occurred as she for instance juxtaposed feminist statements with her
theory of androgyny and both criticised and conformed to the institution of marriage.
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Intertextual referencing to Woolf’s project is investigated by analysing Winterson’s The
Passion (1987) along with examples from other selected novels, primarily Art & Lies (1994)
and Written on the Body (1992). Starting out with an investigation of narrative and plot, it is
shown that Winterson as part of a pastiche imitates and augments Woolf’s stylistic features.
These are revealed to be, for instance, more distinct shifts between narrators, between
characters’ past and present experiences, more layered and intertwined stories, blunter
metafiction, the juxtaposition of fact and fiction, history and fantasy and a similar poetically
inspired plot structure. Investigating Winterson’s imitation of Woolf’s stylistic features also
reveals imitation and augmentation of her thematic features, e.g. sex, gender, identity,
androgyny, cross-dressing, poetry, marriage and time, and in combination this leads to the
conclusion of pastiche in the thesis. It is thus stated, that the amplifying of Woolf’s style
contributes to the effects on Winterson’s readers. It is inferred in the thesis that they are
incited to question facts and fiction and to be generally more critical of literary and societal
conventions. Moreover, The Passion places focus on passion and love, which are shown as
factors Winterson suggests that the reader should engage in and take repeated risks on in life.
Many of the stylistic features and themes are general characteristics of literature, and it is
also questioned in the thesis, whether the similarities identified are coincidental. However, the
revelation of allusions to Woolf in Winterson’s novels leads to the conclusion that on some
level, the relation to Woolf is unique. The fascination with Woolf is shown to be particularly
visible when Winterson alludes to her work, since this evokes Woolf’s writing and signal
respect for her attempts at ‘making it new’, leading to the conclusion of homage pastiche.
Aside from paying homage and reinforcing her own methods through the pastiche, it is
contemplated in the thesis, that Winterson’s overt preoccupation with Woolf outside of her
fiction reveals an ulterior motive of the pastiche. That is, by aligning herself her modernist
heroine, Winterson attains a positive connotation to her work and to her person, as
spokesperson for Virginia Woolf.
All in all, the thesis reveals intertextual referencing to Woolf and an attempt by Winterson
to disrupt the novel genre by putting both factual and fictional entities in question, leaving the
reader with only subjective storytelling to trust. Hence, very apt, the refrain sounding
throughout The Passion, ‘I’m telling you stories. Trust me’, rounds off Winterson’s novel.
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