CHAPTER THREE AND FOUR _ TEXTUAL ANALYSIS 

The main topic of the third chapter of J. Winterson’s memoir is the Bible, ant its importance in the protagonist’s every day life.

She expands this point speaking about the things her mother used to do, as reading, in a loud for half an hour, every day, some lines of the books of the Old Testament.

She reflects also on God and on the reasons why he had created the Word if as she says “it is all going to end in pieces?”

From the language used in the Bible she speak about the changes of it and how people depends on the language of every-day: the poor people of the woking class of Manchester, that knew only the words of God the had been read in the churches had no problem to understand Shakespeare or Donne and so they usually quoting them. But they had no culture. In fact the father of the writer could hardly read and so he loves to listen to his wife reading. But she could impose on her family taboos.

So here comes out the importance of the culture and the importance fo thinking individualy. I think this chapter is linkes with the second one because it speaks about the population of the poor part of Manchester.

The fourth chapter speaks about the books her family have at home and the reason why Jeanette could not read other books that were not the Bible or its commentaries: “the trouble with a book is that you never know what’s in it until it’s too late”.

This is the start of the protagonist’s revolf agains her mother and the aspect is linked with the chapter number one where the writer speaks about her relationship with her mother.

In that period she started to read in her mother ignorance and she understand alone that the thesis her mother said to her was true: books and stories are dangerous.

In this chapter the young Jeanette discovered sexuality, when her mother said to her “no sex with your own sex” and she felf confused for this reason also due to a poem she read by Eliot. She found in literature her way out, like they was medicines. She lived a second life in books where she could find fellings like joy and pain: so she decided she could write her own books.