Review

Author(s): W. S. HAMPL
Review by: W. S. HAMPL
Source: Studies in the Novel, Vol. 33, No. 1 (spring 2001), pp. 119-121
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29533434
Accessed: 27-01-2016 21:08 UTC

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REVIEWS

/ 119

AND TIM WOODS,

eds. "I'm Telling You Stories ": Jeanette Winterson
GRICE, HELENA,
and the Politics of Reading
136 pp. $33.00.
1998).
(Atlanta, GA: Rodopi,
of the few available

One

You Stories

Telling

": Jeanette

book-length
Winterson

studies
and

of Jeanette Winterson's

the Politics

of Reading

texts, "I'm
is an intellec?

of essays by several distinguished

collection
scholars, most of
tually-exhilarating
whom
to place Winterson's
texts
currently teach in the United Kingdom.
Attempting
within a broader
the essays, for the most part, brilliantly
cultural backdrop,
succeed.

The collection is divided into two sections, thefirstbeing "The Politics ofReading
and Writing,"

which
contains
works.
The
essays generally
dealing with Winterson's
the Text,"
is composed
of four essays which
section,
"Sexing
approach
Winterson's
from a specifically
works
lesbian viewpoint.
Tess Cosslett's
in Oranges
Are Not
the Only Fruit: The Bible,
"Intertextuality
second

and Jane Eyre"

reads Winterson's
in its title, but also against Cynthia
The Mists
and Jean Rhys's Wide
ofAvalon
Not the Only Fruit as a text which "pirates"
Malory,
works

liberated

project

16).

(p.

Despite

essay, her cross-readings

prove
Not
the Only Fruit
is insightful,
unlike

the novels

not only against

the three
Zimmer
Ruth, Marion
Bradley's
Sea. Cosslett
reads Oranges
Are

initial novel
Ozick's

Sargasso
from other narratives

so as to create

the plethora
of works
Cosslett
effective.
Cosslett's
close reading
especially

when

she notes

considers

anew,
in her

of Oranges
Are
text is
how Winterson's

and Rhys: Winterson

tells her own
by Ozick,
Bradley,
story,
the latter authors re-tell previous
stories, albeit with more
commiserating
Winterson
and Ozick
for their autobiographical
narratives,
Praising

whereas

insights.
notes
Cosslett

that writers
such as Bradley
as
and Rhys who
take earlier narratives
the "reality" of their own narratives
risk becoming
constrained
by these same earlier
texts (p. 19). As an example,
notes that despite Bradley's
Cosslett
feminist slant on
the Arthurian
is in thrall to it, treating the legend as history, a story
legend, Bradley

whose

is "necessarily

plot

(p. 22).

tragic, that must

end with

the dispossession

of the women"

Pearce's
"The Emotional
Politics
of Reading Winterson"
Lynne's
memoiresque
is a disappointing
recount of her experiences
texts, especially
reading Winterson's
Written on the Body.
Pearce's
to Roland
references
the
Despite
Barthes,
repeated
essay

and although
the reader gains
information
about Pearce's
meanders,
for the essay contain
to at least five of
references
processes
(the endnotes
other publications)
and Pearce's
(even to the point
feelings about Winterson
Pearce
considers
herself obligated
to "explain
and justify the nude photograph

crazily

thought
Pearce's
where

of Winterson

which
in 'The Guardian'"
the essay
is much more
appeared
[p. 36]),
'
s autobiographical
semantics
and Pearce
accounts
than with
engaged with theoretical
oeuvre.
Winterson's
Ute

Kauer's
on

Written

ambiguous
sexually
the Body

"Narration

the Body"
narrator

and Gender:

The Role

of the First-Person

Narrator

in

is one of several

both the gender of the

essays which
question
of this same novel
and Winterson's
a
for writing
intention(s)
narrator
in the first place.
Kaurer's
close reading of Written on

ambiguous
is fascinating,

for she is able to point out idiosyncrasies

of the narrator that
are usually
lost in readers' quests for determining
the narrator's
For instance,
gender.
Kauer
notes that the narrator continually
asks whether
s/he can be trusted and throws
red herrings at the reader (i.e., the narrator says that s/he fed
ripe plums to Louise
only
to say later that plums were
not in season;
the narrator
claims
that Louise's
are English
mannerisms
isAustralian).
Such
only to say later that Louise
incongru?
a failure of the narrator;
ities are not, according
to Kauer,
the
rather, Kauer
applauds

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/ REVIEWS

120

does in her own

constructivism
and search for a new language
(as Cosslett
and new ways
of thought.
"A New Way with Words?
Jeanette Winterson's
Post-Modern
Lyn Pykett's
in the collection,
ism," one of the most
essays
invigorating
critiques Winterson's
comments
and Modernism;
other Modernists,
many
Woolf,
upon Virginia
Pykett
narrator's
essay)

asserts

that Winterson's

which

continues

texts enter

into a "collaborative

sees

what Winterson

as the modernist

dialogue

with Modernism

project"
(p. 53). Winterson,
to Pykett, is not a realist or historian
in that her version(s)
of history record
according
in fact, Pykett
the histories
of those not in traditional/patriarchal
of power;
positions
in that they are less
fictions are "anti-realistic"
goes as far as to say thatWinterson's
concerned
(re-)

with

experience

to understand
attempts
it or else to transcend

Perhaps
Pykett's most
insightful
of the motivations
behind Winterson's

to
than they are with attempts
the universe
or escape
confines
(pp. 54-56).
history's
claim in her first-rate essay
is her questioning
and T. S. Eliot, while
high praise of Woolf

immediate
fails to comment
Carter.
upon her own
precursor,
Angela
of the claims which Pykett makes
texts have also been made
about Winterson's
Many
own fictions;
indeed, the two authors have strikingly
by other critics about Carter's
similar ideologies,
their social constructivism
and re-working
of histories.
especially
that Winterson's
fictions might
essay ends with a tantalizing
Pykett's
suggestion

Winterson

texts.
from re-readings
of Carter's
at the End of History"
"Passion
is experimental
and unfulfilling.
A different narrator speaks
in each of the piece's
three sections;
clearly, this is a nod
to the multiple
narrators of The Passion,
but the technique
falls flat in an academic
benefit
politically
Scott Wilson's

of the narrators attempts to approach

The Passion
with Hegelian
theory,
in a reduction
texts into clich?s
of Winterson's
and
succeeds,
resulting
so much
so that one wonders
if the essay
is even "about"
The Passion.
sound-bites,

work.

Each

yet none

Patricia

Duncker's
"Jeanette Winterson
and the Aftermath
of Femi?
fascinating
as "Jeanette Winterson
and the Lesbian
(which is titled in the Table of Contents
is an intense account
texts in relation to the histories
of Winterson's
of early

nism"
Body")
British

feminism

and feminist
to Simone
back
de Beauvoir,
thought,
reaching
that Oranges
Are Not
Gr?er, Adrienne
Rich, and Monique
Wittig.
Noting
the Only Fruit
is "not so much a coming-out
novel as a portrait of the artist as a young
notes the specific place of this novel
lesbian"
in relation to the
(pp. 77-78), Duncker

Germaine

British

Duncker's
Jeanette's

socio-political
essay
mother

events

are

of

particularly

the

1960s

and

1970s.

The

lesbian

theories

of

when

the figure
of
conceptualizing
the Only Fruit):
Duncker
writes
that in
us how to be feminine,
second
second-class,

helpful
Are Not

(from Oranges
teaches
society "it is the mother who
to motherhood
rate" (p. 83).
Such an approach
enables
the reader to observe more
Jeanette into a "proper"
clearly Jeanette's mother's
attempts to mold
young woman.
Such an approach
a powerful,
also explains
considers
Art and Lies
why Duncker
text and Written on the Body a lost opportunity.
angry, successfully
queer

a much
different and more
concentrated
than does Duncker,
Taking
approach
on the
Stowers's
"The Erupting
as a
Lesbian
Written
Body: Reading
Body
Text"
ever written
Lesbian
is one of the most convincing
about
this novel.
essays

Cath

that "the dissidence

of Winterson's
work
should not be lost" (p. 89),
The Straight Mind,
that the narrator of the novel
is not
claims, via Wittig's
a man or a woman,
but a lesbian.
Stowers
considers
the novel's
writing of the body
to be an exploration
not concerned with such traditional masculine
goals as defining
but with re-mapping,
and merging
boundaries,
transgressing,
(p. 93). Thus, Stowers
is able to claim that the voice of the novel
is female and sexual, and therefore lesbian.

Believing
Stowers

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REVIEWS

Paulina

Palmer's

"The Passion:

ers the power politics

involved
for each other.
portray desire
one

how

describes

Fantasy, Desire"
carefully consid?
in which
in this novel
characters

Storytelling,
the manners

notes
that Henri
in the brothel
passively
another prostitute
from a male's
rescuing
woman
Such
Palmer
tenderness,
(p. 104).
to the ways
inwhich Napoleon
and his soldiers,
including
other-the
soldiers are not, in fact, innocent victims of their
Palmer

prostitute,
actively
a kiss upon
the saved

bestows

assault,

with

/ 121

notes,

is in direct

Henri,

conceptualize

contrast
each

but rather, collude

In addition,
Palmer
of Henri's
desire
is fueled

emperor's manipulation,
for conquest
(p. 109).

with

him so as to feed

notes

that Villanelle's

their own passions

refusal to be the

by her role as active agent who herself

to Venice
and
more, by bringing Henri
further diminishes
Henri's
having him reclaim her captured heart, Villanelle
agency.
"Grand
Theories?
Dislocated
Discourses
in Gut Symmetries,"
the
(Dis)Unified
object
a married

passive
desires

woman

(p.

105).

What's

very brief essay by Grice andWoods,

is disjointed and confusing. Although Grice

are, to a degree,
forays into quantum
physics
interesting and undoubt?
of postmodernism,
the collection's
final essay
is
edly explicate Winterson's
opinion
in focus.
this aimlessness
is due to the editors'
unfortunately
lacking
Perhaps
to be Winterson's
with what
failed project
in her most
unhappiness
they perceive
recent novel:
in attempting
to deconstruct
gendered
(such as Mars/Venus
paradigms
or science/nature),
on
into some rather tired gendered
Winterson
"lapses
stereotypes
and Woods's

a number

of occasions"
and Woods
claim
that
(p. 121). Grice
convincingly
the usefulness
of binaries,
but the editors do not approve
of
questions
in the boundaries
associated
with male/female.
the essay is not
However,
continuing
a total loss in that Grice and Woods
work reflects the
bring to light how Winterson's
concerns
of earlier
texts by authors
s Night
such as Virginia
Woolf
and Day
and
Atwood's
Margaret
Life Before Man.

Winterson

"I'm Telling
You Stories":
Jeanette
Winterson
and
the Politics
of Reading,
the shortcomings
of a very few essays,
is a jubilant and rewarding
collection
despite
of Winterson
and the second
section of the collection
is particularly
scholarship,
a superb collection
have compiled
of essays from a host of
strong. Grice and Woods
fine authors.

W.

KREMER,

S. LILLIAN.

University

S. HAMPL,

Women's

of Nebraska

Press,

Naval

Education

and Training

Holocaust

Center, Newport,

Writing: Memory and Imagination

1999). 278 pp. $45.00 cloth; $24.95 paper.

RI

(Lincoln:

S. Lillian
Kremer's
remarkable
Holocaust
study, Women's
Writing: Memory
and Imagination,
addresses
the central issue of women's
both material
experiences,
and psychic,
the Hebrew
an etymological
word for the Holocaust,
during the Shoah,
distinction

Kremer

that Kremer

refers both

establishes

to the Holocaust,
destruction
legislated

in the Preface
the more

to the work.

commonly

the book,
Throughout
used term to define
the

of European
Jewry, and to the Shoah, a biblical
desolation"
on the
insistence
"ruin, calamity,
(p. xi). Kremer's
definitional
of the Hebrew
term Shoah, which
the
"affirmative
accuracy
dislodges
overtones
of the Greek-derived
Holocaust
and accurately
the
theological
signifies
rupture in the Jewish collective
consciousness,"
resulting from the 1933-45 Nazi war

programmatic,
term designating

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