{"id":1560,"date":"2021-02-14T14:00:46","date_gmt":"2021-02-14T19:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1560"},"modified":"2021-02-14T14:00:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-14T19:00:46","slug":"jacqueline-and-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2021\/02\/14\/jacqueline-and-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacqueline and ‘Normal’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI wanted the clich\u00e9s, the armchair. I wanted the broad road and twenty-twenty vision. What\u2019s wrong with that? It\u2019s called growing up. Maybe most people gloss their comforts with a patina of romance but it soon wears off. They\u2019re in it for the long haul; the expanding waistline and the little semi in the suburbs. What\u2019s wrong with that? Late-night TV and snoring side by side into the millennium. Till death us do part. Anniversary darling? What\u2019s wrong with that?\u201d (Winterson, 26)<\/span><\/p>\n

This passage comes at a point in Winterson\u2019s text where the narrator has just met Jacqueline and is trying to decide whether a relationship with her is what she wants and\/or needs. Jacqueline is different from anyone the narrator has previously been with: \u201cShe worked nine to five Monday to Friday, drove a Mini and got her reading from book clubs. She exhibited no fetishes, foibles, freak-outs or fuck-ups. Above all she was single and she had always been single. No children and no husband\u201d (26). Jacqueline is strikingly normal and mundane, and as the narrator considers their past relationships, they find themself wanting to test the waters of normalcy. They are thinking in circles, considering what they want, what they need, what they should want, and how being with Jacqueline will be different. Deep down, however, they know a relationship with her will never be fulfilling. The repeated question \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with that?\u201d clues the reader in to the narrator\u2019s anxieties around long-term commitment and their fear of an unsatisfying relationship, and shows that they are questioning whether they can really be happy with Jacqueline. The narrator seems to be trying to convince themselves that \u201cgrowing up\u201d and settling into a comfortable, clich\u00e9d relationship isn\u2019t actually that bad; however, the way they imagine that relationship reveals a different story, as they describe a loss of romance, growing old with their partner, and having nothing more exciting than late-night TV and anniversaries to look forward to. The relationship becomes stagnant, unchanging, and boring. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with that?\u201d the narrator asks themself. Nothing, except that a stagnant, boring relationship is at odds with what they really want.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When considering this passage alongside ideas of \u2018normal\u2019 and \u2018queerness\u2019 as imagined by Warner and Rubin, it becomes apparent that the narrator is trying to reconcile their queerness with the desire to conform to given norms. Though the narrator\u2019s gender and sexuality are never revealed, they fit into several categories in the \u201couter limits\u201d or \u201cbad\/abnormal\/unnatural\u201d section of Rubin\u2019s sexual hierarchy. They are unmarried, promiscuous, and their sex life is focused on pleasure rather than procreation; regardless of their gender, they have had relationships with both men and women, and thus can also fit into the category of homosexuality. Jaqueline, on the other hand, seems to fall into more of the \u201cgood\/normal\/natural\u201d categories, though not entirely. Her sexuality is rather complex, as she is introduced as \u201cthe mistress of one of [the narrator\u2019s friends] the confidante of both\u2026 She traded sex and sympathy for \u00a350 to tide her over the weekend and a square meal on Sunday\u201d (25). She therefore fits the \u201ccommercial\u201d and (potentially) \u201csadomasochistic\u201d categories in Rubin\u2019s sexual hierarchy. Yet the narrator believes a relationship with her will be calm, clich\u00e9d, and normal, to the point of boredom. There is no passion between the two of them, and once together, their sex life becomes stagnant (28); it doesn\u2019t seem too much to assume, considering the boredom and lack of romance, that it is private and vanilla as well. The narrator wants to try this calm, mundane kind of relationship with Jacqueline, seeing it and her as a welcome respite from the affairs they have had in the past. The problem is, the narrator is lying to themself on some level. They insist that they want \u201cthe clich\u00e9s, the armchair,\u201d when in reality, they will eventually become bored and frustrated with Jacqueline and her mundanity and leave her, choosing Louise and queerness over Jacqueline and normalcy. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI wanted the clich\u00e9s, the armchair. I wanted the broad road and twenty-twenty vision. What\u2019s wrong with that? It\u2019s called growing up. Maybe most people gloss their comforts with a patina of romance but it soon wears off. They\u2019re in it for the long haul; the expanding waistline and the little semi in the suburbs. … Continue reading Jacqueline and ‘Normal’<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[93494,169399,93517,93502,93493],"class_list":["post-1560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post","tag-jeanette-winterson","tag-rubin","tag-warner","tag-winterson","tag-written-on-the-body"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}