Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Chapter 3

The title of the third chapter is In The Beginning Was The World, so the reader may expect that the text will be about the importance of the world that is what makes us different from the animals.

The third chapter starts with a quotation taken from Mrs. Winterson's book Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, in which she states that her mother taught her to read from the Book of Deuteronomy because it is full of animals. However Deuteronomy is full of Abominations and Unmentionables and whenever they read about a bastard, her mother turned over the page and said "Leave that to the Lord". So the text may probably have the function to speak about the Bible as the basis of Mrs. Winterson's education and her mother's thought.

The last hypothesis is confirmed from different things within the text: first of all it was the book that her mother read every night, it was read by all the working-class families and last but not least it allowed people to better understand the texts of great authors like William Shakespeare or John Donne. As a consequence lots of people quoted these texts, for example her mother liked to greet any news of either calamity or good fortune with the line Ask not for whom the bell tolls, taken from Hamlet.

Chapter 4

The title of the fourth chapter is The Trouble With A Book; an intelligent reader focuses his attention on the word Trouble, it reminds the idea of something that is negative, for example Mrs. Winterson's mother's opinion about books.

Indeed her mother wanted that her family read only the Bible, she thought that the other books were dangerous and she stated that the trouble with a book is that you never know what is in it until it is too late. However Mrs. Winterson read books in secret, in particular her purpose was to read the English Literature in prose A to Z in the Accrington Public Library.

Within the chapter it comes on surface the bad relationship with her mother because she burned all Jeanette's books when she found them and the good relationship with books. Literature is very important for Mrs. Winterson, in her opinion fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft which supports us when we are sinking and they are medicines which heal the rupture reality makes on imagination. A book is seen as a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere and it can convey lessons, hope and safety.