Fantastic histories and women in Jeanette Winterson's fiction

Abstract

This dissertation examines the role of the postmodern heroine in Jeanette Winterson's fiction, namely Sexing the Cherry and The Passion. Whereas the widely-read versions of the classic tales tended to focus on woman as passive victim, these works present a new kind of hero - a female hero - who is presented as a powerful monster through her physical qualities and sexual preference. Over the course of this dissertation I will draw on various postmodern and feminist theories and refer to the fantastic and the fairy tale motifs present in the texts.