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First version of Critical Review For A School Archive

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal is English novelist Jeanette Winterson's last effort. It is a memoir where the most crucial events of her life are given to the reader in a stream of personal emotions, from the early years of an adopted child to her never-ending and hopeful search for a mother. The novel is the spiritual sequel to Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), her apparently autobiographical book. Being only 25 years of age Jeanette was still unable to express her difficult emotional growing experience in full awareness.
The title is immediately appealing to the reader, asking him if it is better to pursue happiness or to be judged normal. Moreover, the writer dedicates her novel to three mothers: the adoptive one, Mrs. Winterson, the "literary" one, Ruth Rendell, and the biological one, Ann S. One of the core subjects of the whole is the eternal search for a mother, a person who can give her love, the love she was never given and she eventually learned to offer and receive.
To a naive and superficial reader, the novel could seem to be disjointed since every chapter develops on its own, but at a deeper level you can notice the thread crossing the whole text as the writer recalls the episodes of her days.

As the writer recognizes, the forming process of her identity was mainly influenced by her birth place, Manchester. 19th century Manchester was an industrial town, with all the contradictions brought by the Industrial Revolution such as the enormous spread between rich and poor people, the oppressive condition of work, which led labourers to rebel against the system and found the first Trade Union movements. What's more, even Marx and Engels wrote their essays starting from the observation of the situation in Manchester.

With her novel, Jeanette Winterson does not only relate her life, but she also tries to involve the reader in her dilemmas, sharing with him the fears as well as the successes. Indeed, as suggested by the title, the writer believes in the never-ending pursuit for happiness:

"Happy times are great, but happy times pass - they have to - because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long and it is not goal centred. [...] The pursuit isn't all or nothing - it's all AND nothing" (chapter 2)

Having a bigot mother, God took an important part of her life; however, while her mother believed in the idea of a punishing God, Jeanette had an opposite view: God was love.

"I loved God of course, in the early days, and God loved me. [...] God is forgiveness - or so that particular story goes, but in our house God was Old Testament and there was no forgiveness without a great deal of sacrifice" (chapter 1)

A theme where J. Winterson shows all her skill in portraying characters is the psychological description of her mother: her habit of stuffing the house with Biblical quotations, the refusal to go to bed with her husband, the repulsion towards sexual desires and earthly life. The comical and humoristic way of describing is probably one of the most catchy features of the novel.

"She was a flamboyant depressive; a woman who kept a revolver in the duster drawer, and the bullets in a tin of Pledge. A woman who stayed all night baking cakes to avoid sleeping in the same bed as my father" (chapter 1)

Books occupy an important part of Jeanette Winterson's life; since she was a child, when her mother closed her in the coal hole, she made up stories. Her mother's prohibition to read books only increased her desire to discover them, and when Mrs Winterson caught her in the act, she burnt all the books. Reading is the key to get out of an unpleasant world; books are a home, where you never feel cold. It is a thought every reader can make his own.

"The books had gone, but they were objects; what they held could not be so easily destroyed. What they held was already inside me, and together we would get away. [...] Books for me, are a home.
Books don't make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book and you go inside. [...] There is warmth there too - a hearth" (chapter 4/5)

The research for a mother, which occupies the second half of the book, ends up well, with Jeanette Winterson and her mother's meeting in Manchester. Yet, the wound never gets healed, no matter how hard you try:

"All my life I have worked from the wound. To heal it would mean an end to one identity - the defining identity. But the healed wound is not the disappeared wound; there will always be a scar. I will always be recognisable by my scar" (chapter 15)

The writer takes the reader directly inside her medley of emotions, but she eventually leaves him to write his own story, which must be based on love, the point of starting and ending.

"Love. The difficult word. Where everything starts, where we always return. Love. Love's lack. The possibility of love. I have no idea what happens next" (coda)

Love, to Jeanette Winterson, is a pure feeling, not necessary linked to sexual attraction, though she has also experienced that; it is more a message of hope and desire to live, a longing for self-realization.
It is a universal message, which invites us to take our life in our hands. To write our story, as she has done.