Jeanette Winterson 

Why Be Happy, When You Could Be Normal?

Structural analysis - Argumentative text

 "Why Be Happy, When You Could Be Normal?" is a novel by Jeanette Winterson, written and published in London in 2011. It is based on another semi-autobiography "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" written in 1985.

The novel is a memoir, a literary genre different from an autobiography because in the memoir the writer focuses on her personality, feelings and emotions; instead of focusing on her story disposed in a chronological way, as it happens in the autobiography.  In the memoir the novelist tells facts in a mental order (main difference between a memoir and an autobiography) and the reader is asked to find connections between events.

Right from the title of the novel the intelligent reader understands that there is a precise message the novelist wants to send: she wants to warn people about life. The adjective happy expresses a way of living that everyone try to reach; the other one normal expresses another way of living and thinking which in the novelist's opinion identifies and coincides whit masses.

The novel is organized in 15 chapters which have the function to describe a particular event or fact which has happened in J. Winterson's life, or a particular idea or vision of Jeanette about world. They are not chronologically connected: this is a typical characteristic of a postmodern novel. In the memoir the language used is simple but the novelist adopts a straight-forward way of speaking to communicate directly to the ideal reader. Each chapter corresponds to an idea of Jeanette's vision of the world: her conception of Life, Home, Literature, Identity, her interest in the contradictions of the world (love, religion, history, society), and the contrast between her world and Mrs. Winterson's one.

At the beginning of the book the reader finds a dedication: "To my three mothers: Constance Winterson, Ruth Rendell, Ann S."; it is referred to the novelist's three mothers: her adoptive mother, her literary one who contributes to J. Winterson's formation and rediscovery of her past story, and her biological one, who represent the object of Jeanette's search. About Ruth Rendell the novelist says "Ruth has known me since I was twenty-six, and she lent me a cottage to write in when I was trying to make my way. She had been the Good Mother - never judging, quietly supporting, letting me talk, letting me be".

In the novel the narrator coincides with the main character: Jeanette Winterson. She tells the story, so she doesn't have to introduce the character. As a matter of fact the reader doesn't find her physical or psychological description, instead he comes to know her feelings, emotions and behaviours connected to the different situations described. 

On the contrary the reader finds a detailed introduction of her adoptive mother: she is obsessed by religion and the Bible is her fundamental teaching she gives to Jeanette. Indeed, when Jeanette was a child, she wanted her as a missionary. Moreover in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson highlights the strong and active character of her mother: just in the first chapter she says "my father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle". In this way the novelist underlines the passive and undervalued figure of her adoptive father in comparison with the character of her adoptive mother.

The setting of the story is composed by J. Winterson's home in Accrington, by the Church, and by Manchester. Particularly in the second chapter of the novel the writer describes the city of Manchester during the period of the Industrial revolution  and during her life "Manchester was a good place to be born".  She reflects on negative aspects brought by the revolution; the city is described "the filth, the smoke, the stink of dye and ammonia, sulphur and coal". Men and women were exploited, they were exhausted and ill-clad, their children were weak and they went in industries with their parents.

With industries Manchester became a new active, but uncontrollable reality, which showed its effects on ordinary people. In Winterson's idea, the most terrible thing about industrialization is that makes escape necessary: in a system that generates masses, individualism is the only way out.

Finally the reader finds the reason of why Jeanette Winterson writes. She writes to repair to the suffering that the adoption brought her, but particularly to find a truth even if she perfectly knows that there is not a single and absolute truth.  This is the concept of Postmodernism.