Jeanette Winterson, young and naive grew up with teachings of the bible pumping through her veins. As her Mother taught her, their lives revolved around the Lord, everything that happens is of the Lord’s doing and the Lord was never wrong. Jeanette’s Mother made it a point to teach her daughter about the The Bible inside and out. Jeanette was trained to be a loyal member of the church but, what if this training clouded her judgement rather than helping her find her way to blissful salvation?
Jeanette has a wall built between her and reality. It is clear in the novel when the author states, “I learnt that it rains when clouds collide with a high building, like a steeple, or a cathedral; the impact punctures them, and everybody underneath gets wet. This was why, in the old days, when the only tall buildings were holy, people used to say cleanliness is next to godliness. The more godly your town, the more high buildings you’d have, and the more rain you’d get.” (Winterson 15)
It is obvious to anyone who has faith in the sciences that the occurrence of rain is far more complex than the collision of cloud and tall building. Though the idea that this is so is kind of cute in a fairytale sort of way, it is simply not so. As a young child, Jeanette is naive because she knows nothing about the world outside the church.
Though we haven’t reached the point in the story where Jeanette comes out, it can be assumed, with such a strict loyalty to the Lord, that revealing her sexuality was an incredibly difficult thing to do. In the novel, when discussing two unmarried women who ran a shop together, Jeanette heard her Mother say, “they dealt in unnatural passions” (7). The term “unnatural” has synonyms such as outrageous, bizarre and preposterous, creating a negative stigma around the word thus, creating a negative stigma around women loving women. Being taught that being lesbian is unnatural at a young age can certainly make it difficult to accept your sexuality.
5 thoughts on “Naivety and Unnatural Passions”
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What you have said reminded me of the book Room. Room tells the story of a young boy who was raised in a room that his Mom was kept hostage in. His world was based on the objects of that room. This is similar to how Jeanette’s Mom has built her world around Christianity. Going to public school was like leaving her own “room”. When the boy finally entered reality, he often wanted to go back to the room. I wonder if Jeanette will have moments when she wants to go back to her “room” to after she leaves her home.
Room also just became a movie, here’s the movie link if you are interested! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Ci-pAL4eE
I enjoyed your analysis of the passage on page 15. That passage definitely stood out for me as well since it illustrates her naivety and skewed perception of the world so well. Your analysis goes well with the “The Shaming of Heathens” post. Both discuss the ways in which Jeanette’s religious upbringing has affected her perception of the world around her.
The moment where Winterson described how rain works also stood out to me when I was reading. I like the point you make about how it does fit with the sort of cute, child-like narrative style that Winterson uses during this portion of her book. I think you were right though that this goes further and represents the almost “brainwashing” that she experienced in her young life by the church. Clearly when she grows up and is exposed to science and other things that will contradict what her mother and the church have taught her, she will experience an intense struggle between her previous beliefs and the new ones she will be faced with. I think that this also mirrors something we talked about in class, which is the struggle part of the coming out narrative. Perhaps as we get further in the novel, we will see more mirroring of her breaking away from the church alongside her breaking away from the heteronormative narrative she’s been taught to believe in.
It is interesting how you critically reason to foretell the difficulty Janette might face when she comes out later in the story. She is always an obey daughter who absorbs the belief in God that her mother teaches her, and is innocent in a way that she only relies on that one single view of the world instead of having access to various viewpoints. I notice moment she has a thought that “The sermon was on perfection, and it was at this moment that I began to develop my first theological disagreement” is the first time she has her opinion against the set of acceptable behavior that she is familiar with. Jennette is a heroine considering the fact that she has the courage and mentally strength to rise beyond her circumstance and find her identity.
I agree with the author of this post. Because of her upbringing Jeanette has not been able to form her own views on life. Everything that she has been introduced has been either from her mother or the church. This has limited Jeanette to the point where she does not know about many things in life that most people her age do. She has no experience and only knows life with the church. This has caused Jeanette to become secluded and naive. Without the knowledge of the outside world, how will she be able to come out and accept herself?