Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal Essay

Memories chosen to go with a person in time affect their entire perception of life. Our personal feelings have a relation to our memories. The memories carried by a person can easily be untrustworthy through the storyteller. In Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette's memory is not reliable because of her own perception of her adolescent life. Jeanette Winterson recognizes that, as the story teller, we see the story through her eyes. She is very straight forward as she recites the haunting events that happened to her as a child. As a honest writer, she expresses everything for how it is. “I have a memory - true or not true?” (Winterson, page 11). Jeanette is sharing with her readers that she is genuinely questioning her memory. In this moment, Jeanette is recalling a rather significant moment where she thinks she sees her birth mother for the first time. A occasion as powerful as meeting a birth parent would simply be unforgettable. As she continues to recall the memory, Jeanette asks Mrs. Winterson if the woman in the doorway was her mother. Her response followed such
If a person has a memory as a baby it because someone has told them multiple times. “Until I was two years old, I screamed.” (Winterson, page 20) Since Jeanette can speak about a time where she was just two years old, Mrs. Winterson has evidently told Jeanette about the apparent hell she raised as a baby. Jeanette, unintentionally, views herself as the devils child only because her mother influenced her memory to remember her as such. The memorable first line of the book Mrs. Winterson says, “The devil led us to the wrong crib.” (Winterson, page 1) Those cruel words will resonate with any person. Without even knowing, Mrs. Winterson influenced the perception of Jeanette's memories as a infant. Even though Jeanette mentally can not remember herself as a baby, her memories of her as a baby is her being a devil