Manchester in J.Winterson and A.Tocqueville

In the second chapter of the book “Why be Happy When You Could Be Normal” Jeanette Winterson  analyses Manchester, the city in which she was born.She describes her natal place from different points of view, probably to give the readers the necessary  information to understand the book coming events, or to share something relevant for her growth.

Firstly, she starts describing Manchester during the period of her birth, in 1959. She says it was a radical city because of Marx and Engels’  influence and repressive because of the Peterloo Massacres and the Corn Laws. At the beggining of the text we can notice a contradictory statement (which can be considered a pun) when the author claims that “Manchester was in the south of north of England” and J. Winterson herself asserts that there’s a contadiction in this kind of thought. There’s also a contrst in the fact that Manchester used to be shared by to earldoms: Cheshire and Lancashire. The writer, in the second part of the essay gives some information about the location of Manchester in England, and adds some details about geographic elements. Next, she examins the features of the city during the Industrial Revolution quoting Dickens’Hard Times and giving and extract from “ the Condition of the English Working Class in England” 1844, by Engels. This work was written almost during the same period of another important account regarding Manchester: the one written by Alexis Tocqueville in 1835. Of course, J. Winterson’s description of Manchester was published hundreds years later so the aims of the two writers are completely different one from each other. Alexis de Torqueville analyses the landscape of Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, focusing on the consequences for poor people and workers. At the beginning he gives some geographic details about Manchester, but he definitely wants to underline the conditions of the city during a fundamental period which led also to important consequences. As well as Jeanette Winterson, the writer uses some pharases such as “the crunching wheels of machinery,” “The regular beat of looms” “the heavy rumble of carts” ecc which are able to make the description almost real to the readers. In fact, the repetitive use of onomatopeic words is useful for the imagination of people who didn’t have the possibility to actually the see the city.

Furthermore, both the writers addresses directly to the readers. Alexis de Tocqueville saying “look up, all around this place you will see the huge palaces of industry. You will hear the noise of furnaces…” and J. Winterson saying “ Imagine it, the vast steamed-powered gaslit factories…”.This narrative tecnique, is useful to make the reader part of the story, in order to give him more concrete feelings about the place described.

In conclusion, the overall effect of the Manchester description by Alexis Torqueville, is a realistic effect. The writer gives lots of details in order to make the audience understand how the situation really was at that time. Whereas, J.Winterson describes the city with more feelings, adding the text some own elements of her point of view, in spite of the other description which is pretty objective.