Jeanette Winterson and the Lesbian Postmodern: Story-telling, Performativity and the Gay Aesthetic

Abstract

In exploring the lesbian postmodern as exemplified in the fiction of Jeanette Winterson, I shall centre my discussion on The Passion (1987) and The Power Book (2001). My decision to focus on these two texts reflects the fact that, since they were written at different stages of Winterson's career, they give an insight into the development of her intellectual interests and her viewpoint on postmodernism. They also illustrate the different approaches she adopts toward time. Whereas The Passion is a work of historiographic metafiction located in the period of the Napoleonic Wars, The Power Book, though set in the present, is futuristic in emphasis in that it treats a relationship between two women that takes place in virtual reality.