Writing a history of difference: Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry and Angela Carter's Wise Children

College Literature, Winter 2002 by Roessner, Jeffrey

Moreover, the desire that inspires Jordan's quest finally becomes a new foundation for his essential self. For much of the novel,Winterson challenges the notion of a singular, self-determining individual: she insists that the characters are multiple and not single, and by depicting modern incarnations of Dogwoman and Jordan, refuses to fix their location in space and time. But as Winterson mystifies Jordan's pursuit of Fortunate, she makes clear that what he really seeks is access to an inner, ideal self. Noting that "the Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God," he claims, "I'm not looking for God, only for myself . . '" (1989, 115). Unable to understand why spiritual seekers would look for God, Jordan explains that "Some of them have told me that the very point of searching for God is to forget about oneself, to lose oneself forever. But it is not difficult to lose oneself, or is it the ego they are talking about, the hollow screaming cadaver that has no spirit within it" (116). Jordan has undertaken the arduous attempt to find, not lose his essential self-a self again clearly distinct from his body By making this ideal self the object of a religious quest, the novel reinforces an essentially Romantic drive to locate a ground of being outside time, space, and material existence.

Ironically, even as it celebrates Jordan's search for his true self, Sexing the Cherry records the painful isolation produced by his narcissistic desire. Both Dogwoman and Jordan suffer in their isolated subjectivity as they misinterpret each other's motives and doubt each other's love. Although she continually worries about Jordan's future and the possibility that his heart will be broken, Dogwoman never expresses these concerns to him. For his part, Jordan hopes to emulate Dogwoman, whom he sees as "self-sufficient and without self-doubt" (Winterson 1989, 114). He does not understand her concern for him or how self-conscious she is. In fact, her reserve leads him to question her love: "I think she loves me," he says,"but I don't know" (114). Winterson's novel here registers the human suffering that results as her characters focus on their internal journeys and turn away from their connection to others. Although the reader sees the pain endured by the characters, the novel does not suggest that it could be lessened by better, more forthright communication between them. Indeed, the desire that motivates Jordan's quest is never modified in relation to another person. Instead, the novel endorses the solitary quest to slough off the physical self and its miseries and-with Fortunata's dancing students-aspire to the condition of music.

Presenting this romanticized vision of passion, Sexing the Cherry expresses a revolutionary impulse to escape the linear temporality Winterson associates with patriarchal history. In this way, the novel embodies key elements of Kristeva's notion of second-wave feminism, which utterly rejects the linear time of male history and ultimately risks endorsing a troubling brand of counter-sexism. Emphasizing the force of a desire that transcends time and space, Winterson attempts to replace history with myth, particularly as she redefines what constitutes natural sexuality. In so doing, Sexing the Cherry replicates the logic of the homophobic discourse that it explicitly critiques: Winterson often simply reverses the terms of the debate by presenting lesbian desire as more natural than either heterosexual or male homosexual desire. Mythologizing passion in this way, Sexing the Cherry expresses a drive to escape the vicissitudes of history and locate a transcendent ground for its lesbian-feminist critique of patriarchal culture. In so doing, it forms a marked contrast with Angela Carter's Wise Children, which represents a shift toward a third wave of feminism that neither celebrates the desire to escape history altogether nor endorses a counter-sexist vision in its challenge to restrictive gender stereotypes.