‘Gertrude and Alice are living inParis. They are helping the Red Cross during the war. They are driving along ina two-seater Ford shipped from the States. Gertrude likes driving but she refuses to reverse. She will only go forward because she says that the whole point of the twentieth century is progress.

The other thing Gertrude will not do is read the map. Alice Toklas reads the map and Gertrude sometimes takes notice and sometime not.

It is going dark. There are bombs exploding. Alice is losing patience. She throws down the map and shouts at Gertrude: ‘THIS IS THE WRONG ROAD.'

Gertrude drives on. She says, ‘Right or wrong, this is the road, and we are on it.'The extract is taken from the ninth chapter of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal and the quotation "This Is The Road" is the title of the following chapter. Jeanette Winterson may have decided to quote Gertrude Stein since she found at least a significant analogy between herself and her: they are both homosexual writers.

Moreover, according to the extract, they both seem to be quite resolute and courageous women: when they take a decision they don't look back and face difficulties, without following any external rule (for example the map); that is, they try to make it on their own. The quotation is an argument in favour of Jeanette's conception about literature: a free world in which authors are friends, who share their experiences with readers: as Gertrude and Alice are a couple and "will only go forwards", as Jeanette and Janey prefer "being happyinstead of being normal".