Crossing Boundaries

Jeanette Winterson (1959-) ranks among one of the most prominent and prolific writers in the world of contemporary British literature. Boundary is a recurring theme in Jeanette Winterson’s works. In her writing, she often portrays characters who attempt to cross the "boundaries" of religion, myth, space, history and science, and she herself always wants to cross the "boundaries" of discourses, a quality that’s challenging and also entertaining. Her works Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), The Passion (1987) and Written on the Body (1992) all show her efforts to subvert the traditional discourse and reconstruct new ones. This thesis explores how the protagonists in Winterson’s three novels resist the dominant discourses such as Christian doctrine, historicized valor and scientific knowledge and how Winterson subverts these discourses, which are mythological narratives, and reconstructs new discourses.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One presents a brief introduction to Winterson and her literary career as well as a literature review and the theoretical framework. Chapter Two studies how Winterson illustrates the vision that characters are dominated or deceived by Christian doctrine, historical discourse or scientific discourse. Chapter Three reveals the efforts of Winterson to exhibit the characters’resistance against the dominant discourses, including religious discourse, heterosexuality, historicized valor and medical discourse. Chapter Four explores how Winterson manages to construct new discourses-feminist discourse, personal narratives and lyrical discourses-to subvert the dominant status of the grand narratives. The last chapter presents a brief summary of the study. It concludes that in the society dominated by religion, grand narrative of history and science, the existence of boundaries is inevitable and the efforts to cross these boundaries are an ongoing process. It also considers some of the limitations of the study and suggests several possible perspectives for future research in this area.