Subversion And Reconstruction In Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion

Jeanette Winterson(1959-)is a prominent but controversial contemporary British woman writer.She is good at adopting post-modern narrative techniques in creation and shows deconstruction of grand meaning,one evaluation criterion and authoritative discourse.Therefore,she is always regarded as a postmodernist writer.The Passion is her third novel which is set in the historical context of the Napoleonic wars.The novel tells about a war and love story of Napoleonic era and regards victims and survivors-Henry and Villanelle of the Napoleonic war as the protagonists.The thesis attempts to interpret the reconstruction of the discourse of the ignored by means of New Historicism in the novel.First,the thesis focuses on the rewriting of the Wars in the Napoleonic Era.It shows strong flavor of New Historicism through the juxtaposition of history and fiction by turning the grand narrative into discontinuous and fragmented histories.It re-evaluates Napoleon’s invasion of England in1805 and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.Second,this thesis explores Henry and Villanelle’s subversion and self-fashioning in this novel.Henry goes through ups and downs from the army to Venice and finally ends up in a mad house.Villanelle is a fantastic female who is different from the traditional female.The thesis reconstructs their discourse power through analyzing Henry and Villanelle’s experiences.Finally,the thesis focuses on the reconstruction of the discourse of the ignored which reveals Winterson’s concern to the neglected groups.In conclusion,this thesis illustrates Jeanette Winterson’s view of history in the novel from the perspective of New Historicism,that is,through breaking through the situation that man dominated the historical narrative under the strict patriarchal society.She calls on the return of the marginalized’ voices and wants to reconstruct the discourse of the ignored.At the same time,Winterson also shows ethical concern to the individual life in the novel.