Explore The Presentation And Significance Of Winterson
Targets:
To reread essay to ensure fluency
Focus on use of apostrophes
Explore the presentation and significance of Winterson’s relationship with literature, focusing on the three chosen extracts
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded, brutally honest memoir by Jeanette Winterson about her search for belonging—for love, a home, and a mother. A prominent theme within her story is her intimate relationship with literature and how it shapes her identity. Her relationship with literature stands out in particular as it is one of the few constants in her unpredictable journey.
Literature serves as a lifeline for Winterson in her younger years. From an early age she demonstrates an eager appetite for literature; by the age of sixteen she managed to read her way through her local library till the letter M. Jeanette makes special mention of Shakespeare and metaphorically compares ‘reading his plays and sonnets’ to ‘getting dressed in the morning.’ This highlights how prominent his works were to her and that they formed part of her daily routine. It indicates the normality that literature gave her; not only in a literal sense but in a way that it allowed her to escape her abnormal and dysfunctional childhood.
The embodiment of literature as a lifeline extends into several other chapters however its importance and impact increases. In chapter 11 she tells of how the more she read the more she transitioned from a young girl, ‘isolated’ and ‘floating on her little raft in the present’ to an educated women with ‘bridges leading to solid ground’ who had the stability to be able to plan for the future. This imagery of being able to find her own sense of identity within literature is very much contrasted by the previous image of being in ‘danger of drowning’ in her circumstances in a previous chapter which highlights this change in stability and control that literature helps Jeanette to find.
Despite this, there is a shift in tone in chapter 12 where Jeanette
To reread essay to ensure fluency
Focus on use of apostrophes
Explore the presentation and significance of Winterson’s relationship with literature, focusing on the three chosen extracts
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded, brutally honest memoir by Jeanette Winterson about her search for belonging—for love, a home, and a mother. A prominent theme within her story is her intimate relationship with literature and how it shapes her identity. Her relationship with literature stands out in particular as it is one of the few constants in her unpredictable journey.
Literature serves as a lifeline for Winterson in her younger years. From an early age she demonstrates an eager appetite for literature; by the age of sixteen she managed to read her way through her local library till the letter M. Jeanette makes special mention of Shakespeare and metaphorically compares ‘reading his plays and sonnets’ to ‘getting dressed in the morning.’ This highlights how prominent his works were to her and that they formed part of her daily routine. It indicates the normality that literature gave her; not only in a literal sense but in a way that it allowed her to escape her abnormal and dysfunctional childhood.
The embodiment of literature as a lifeline extends into several other chapters however its importance and impact increases. In chapter 11 she tells of how the more she read the more she transitioned from a young girl, ‘isolated’ and ‘floating on her little raft in the present’ to an educated women with ‘bridges leading to solid ground’ who had the stability to be able to plan for the future. This imagery of being able to find her own sense of identity within literature is very much contrasted by the previous image of being in ‘danger of drowning’ in her circumstances in a previous chapter which highlights this change in stability and control that literature helps Jeanette to find.
Despite this, there is a shift in tone in chapter 12 where Jeanette