In the context of contemporary British fiction, Jeanette Winterson’s works represent
a particularly versatile fusion between postmodernism and storytelling, and a challenge
to what Morrison (2003, 96) has referred to as “the status quo.” Much research, in
fact, shows that Winterson’s dissection of structures is integral to the body of culture
(Smith 2005). Not surprisingly, Winterson’s play with narrative conventions, language,
and narrators—characteristics indeed of many feminist and postmodernist texts—
has also attracted the attention of critics. Finney’s (2002, 23-31) study is based on
Winterson’s concern with language which, for him, is almost obsessive. By tracing a
parallel between sexuality and textuality in Winterson’s Written on the Body, Finney depicts an immanent corporeality. Rubinson (2001, 218-232) proposes a similar
direction when he highlights the proximity of scientific and aesthetic discourses and
the female body in that same novel. Similarly, Shiffer (2004, 31-52) considers the
idea of constructing new possibilities for women’s identities through a study of
Winterson’s language. In a different register, Lopez (2007, 273) suggests that
Winterson’s texts can be read as processes of subject development which bear
possibilities of multiplicity by “liberating uncertainties of desire.”
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