Telling of (Fairy) Tales in Jeanette Winterson's Fiction

Abstract

In Jeanette Winterson’s fiction story-telling and tales have an important role. Her protagonists are strong-willed young women having exceptional power over their lives. Her novels are stories containing classical tale elements and her characters evoke fabled figures. However, her novels are tales with a renewed, postmodern cadre that is contemporary society; in it she represents the contemporary man and his dilemmas. To transform classical tales into exciting, philosophical, emotional novels, she had to rethink some of the classical tale elements and express things that were taboo in pedagogical tales for children. Winterson writes to adults, sometimes using fairy elements remembered from childhood: she aims to represent a new world, a new society with new norms and changing norms with the changing situation of the individual in the center... (Introduction)