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“She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies.” – Winterson Pg. 1

This quote by Jeanette is used to describe her mother. Jeanette’s mother sees the world in black and white with nothing in between. There are people she sees as good (friends) and people she see as bad (enemies). For her there is nothing in between. People are either holy or evil. In the eyes of Jeanette’s mother, one cannot be good if they are non-religious. These views have been deeply instilled into Jeanette.

Further on in the novel the reader realizes that Jeanette does not fall into her mother’s black and white views. Yes, Jeanette loves God and goes to church religiously but she falls into middle ground since she is a lesbian. Unfortunately, there is no middle ground for Jeanette’s mother. Since Jeanette is a lesbian she must be deemed evil.

This quote from the novel foreshadows the plot of the novel. It shows the problems that Jeanette will have with her mother and her mother’s views. Since Jeanette is in the middle ground she will be kicked out of her house for being a lesbian. In her mother’s eyes, she will not exist.

This has a tremendous impact on Jeanette. It allows her to take a step back and question everything that has been instilled into her. She questions whether or not she can still be a good person since she loves women. Winterson uses this quote to suggest that in life there is no such thing as “black” and “white”. There is a spectrum, room for fluidness.

“I did remember, but what my mother didn’t know was that I now knew she had rewritten the ending… I have never since played cards, and I have never since read Jane Eyre.” (Winterson 74)

When reading this paragraph, there are a lot of different interpretations that one can have regarding Jeanette’s life.  This moment, where she discovers her mother has manipulated the end of Jane Eyre and she finds her adoption papers, are both defining moments in her life and within her search for an identity.  These two pillars are essential to the identity that Jeanette has established with herself.  To then find out later in life that not only did her mother rewrite the ending of a book they had read throughout her childhood and that she was not actually her mother’s birth daughter, were devastating losses that made Jeanette question who she was if she did not have both of those elements to define her.  This destruction of ideals for Jeanette makes her questions everything she was brought up to believe. She says in the passage after this quote that she no longer knows where to look for the information that she craves (Winterson 75).  This is essential to her discovery of who she will become, because Jeanette now realizes that not only is it possible for her to find answers outside of her mother’s word, it is imperative that she looks elsewhere to find her truth.

An important factor that is revealing here is what the real narrative of Jane Eyre teaches Jeanette when she discovers the real ending.  This allegory is extremely critical to Jeanette’s mindset changing because when she discovers that Jane does not marry St. John, which her mother had written, Jeanette realizes that all stories do not always in the way that other people deem is right, which is a turning moment in the question of Jeanette’s identity.

pg 72 “Everyone always said you found the right man. my mother said it, which was confusing. My auntie said it, which was even more confusing.” -Jeanette Winterson

 

This passage encompasses one of the greatest conflicts in most coming-out stories, which is the reaction of one’s family. In this case, a super religious family is hell-bent on the idea that Jeanette is straight and aspires to marry. Knowing that a family has such expectations will keep one from coming out for the simple fact that revealing the true identity could result in strained relationships and even homelessness, not to mention self-loathing. Jeanette, in this passage, is both confused and discouraged as while she feels she is gay, she is afraid of what her family will think and how they will react. Judging by the language used, specifically referring to how auntie was “even more confusing,” it is obvious Jeanette cares more deeply about her family’s perception of her, specifically her aunt, than the material punishments.

This passage has a lot of significance within it. The sentence specifically, “and I have never since read Jane Eyre” has a lot of meaning. This sentence signifies how Jane is hiding from the reality of what she has just discovered. Once Jeanette went to the library and read the story for herself, was the moment she became an individual. This was the first thing Jeanette did for herself and realized her mother was not who she thought she was. Jane Eyre is a reminder of a time where she had a much simpler life. She wasn’t yet faced with diversity or with the idea that her mother was not who she thought she was. The book symbolizes Jeanette’s relationship with her mother. Her mother manipulated the ending of the book, the way she was manipulating Jeanette to think. All of her life, Jeanette valued her mothers opinion over anything else. This effects Jeanette’s coming out story because it shows how timid she is and how naive she is to all of her new findings. She does not know how to think or how to act without the guidance of her mother. She now needs to make her own path, one that was not created by her mother. I think Jeanette fears this unknown path. She is scared of all of the twists and turns she will have to face on her own. This is a time where Jeanette needs to find the ability to be proud of who she is and make decisions for herself. I think by not reading Jane Eyre, she has not yet found that courage to do so.

“She stroked my head for a long time, and then we hugged and it felt like drowning. Then I was frightened but couldn’t stop” (pg 88-89)

This passage talks about the feelings/actions that Jeanette has with Melanie. Her feelings are overwhelming and take over her suddenly. This is revealed by her use of the words “drowning”, “frightened but couldn’t stop”, and “crawling in my belly”. Jeanette definitely feels something and even questions Melanie later on if it is an “Unnatural Passion”. The feeling and language imply an attraction between Jeanette and Melanie. The passage helps to tell the coming out story because it shows the early/young feeling of attraction Jeanette had to girls. Often in coming out stories people talk about how “they always were different” or “always knew”. This language implies that she has always been a lesbian. This is a common counter-argument that LGBT tends to use when people claim that being queer is a “decision”. Even her mother and pastor believe that she may be a “wicked person” and decided to be attracted to women, “It was my own fault. My own perversity. They started arguing between themselves about whether I was an unfortunate victim or a wicked person” (pg 131). The idea that people decide to “sin” is difficult to argue because it is ridiculous to believe that someone would choose to have a life that entails so much discrimination and prejudice. What I’m really trying to say is that no one made or enticed Jeanette to be a lesbian. She always has been and we can see that from her towards men and her attraction to Melanie.

 

“Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing:
That no emotion is the final one” (Winterson, 52)

In the book of Exodus, the Israelites leave Egypt where they were enslaved and wander the desert to find the chosen land. In the last paragraphs of the Exodus Chapter, Jeanette’s story represents how she leaves her own mother’s expectations. Jeanette describes two shapes in her made up story: (1) a 3-dimensional tetrahedron and (2) a 1- dimensional isosceles triangle. The first represents herself, while the later represents her evil mother. A tetrahedron can be made with different materials. For instance, we read about Jeanette making a tetrahedron with rubber bands but I realized that someone can also make that shape by stacking oranges. Even though oranges may be the easiest to stack due to their symmetrical nature, apples, though more difficult, can also be stacked. This is consistent with the theme of the novel; oranges are not the limiting factor in building a tetrahedron, other factors can be manipulated to have the same result. The geometrical shapes allude to the characters that they represent. While Jeanette’s Mom only sees through her own perspective and stays in 1-dimension like an isosceles triangle, we see the many tetrahedron faces of Jeanette throughout her novel.

This three-dimensionality is illustrated through Jeanette’s curiosity and imagination. In her fairytale, the Tetrahedron received a gift of midgets. The midgets acted out different plays while the Tetrahedron walked around. As the Tetrahedron walked around he noticed “that no emotion is the final one” (Winterson, 52). The midgets represent the stories that Jeanette has been told her entire life. In her narrative, she speaks through biblical stories because all she knows are these stories, and therefore the bible parallels the script of her own upbringing. “No emotion” means that that script is up for interpretation. Ultimately, this shows that there is a piece is her life that is undetermined and blank which defies the boundaries that are written out for her by her mother and the church.

“I did remember… never since read Jane Eyre” (Winterson, pp. 74-75)

This small paragraph holds a lot of important details in Jeanette’s life. It’s in this paragraph that she discovers her mother had been lying to her about the ending of her favorite childhood book, Jane Eyre. Not only that, but she also discovers that she was adopted. Jeanette’s whole life is constantly controlled by her mother and religion, often times leaving little space for Jeanette to live her own life. Growing up, her mother always read Jane Eyre to her over and over again, but Jeanette was never allowed to read it. I think that is symbolic towards her own life in that over and over again her mom “reads” to Jeanette how her life is supposed to be lived, but never is Jeanette allowed to read her own story (in this case, her life). Finding out that her own mother lied to her every time she read the book is more detrimental to Jeanette than most children, in my opinion, because she always viewed her mother as this “ultimate” figure that could do no wrong. Jeanette, although she tries to deny it, now has to write her OWN ending to her OWN story and not allow her mother to manipulate her life. She also compares this experience to the day she found her adoption papers. Another traumatic experience for Jeanette who now feels like her own story is a lie and now feels lost. Jeanette falls into a pit of denial when she says “I have never since played cards, and I have never since read Jane Eyre”. Rather than taking on the situation head on and using this opportunity to write her own story, these two experiences were so traumatic she almost doesn’t know how to approach it and therefore pretends like nothing has happened. This passage is important because it’s the first time Jeanette is realizing that maybe her life can’t be controlled by her mom and maybe it’s time for her to rewrite her story, her own way.

Interesting analysis. I’d like to focus on the earliest part of your description in discussing the usage of the word “gay” and how both Yeats and Winterson use it. I feel as if, specifically in the lines you’ve cited, “gay” is meant to shock the reader in the beginning by making the statement, essentially, that ‘gay people are strong.’ But after lingering on the text, I am curious about flipping the meaning to “strong people are gay”, thus assuming that gay means a sense of joy, and those who rebuild are both gay in the sense that they are part of the LGBTQ+ community but also gay in the sense that they are happy and proud of the accomplishments of said community. I may be wrong, I just felt as if the terms holds two meanings.

Read through terms:

1. Locate terms you have not encountered before or terms that surprise, interest, or confuse you.
2. Connect one of our terms to something in one of our texts, or in one of the videos you watched.

Then:

Locate a passage in our novel that you found interesting, revealing, or strange.  Begin to ask questions about they passage based on close reading (what repeats? are there binaries? clusters? Take a stab as a group– what do you think it means?

Write your passage on the board (or an excerpt). Include page #s.