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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
One
You Stories
Telling
": Jeanette
book-length
Winterson
studies
and
of Jeanette Winterson's
the Politics
of Reading
texts, "I'm
is an intellec?
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
liberated
project
16).
(p.
Despite
the novels
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
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).
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
ambiguous
is fascinating,
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/ REVIEWS
120
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
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
Believing
Stowers
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REVIEWS
Paulina
Palmer's
"The Passion:
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
emperor's manipulation,
for conquest
(p. 109).
with
him so as to feed
notes
that Villanelle's
passive
desires
woman
(p.
105).
What's
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,
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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