Jeanette

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• by
• Jeanette
• Winterson

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Jeanette Winterson'sWhy Be Happy When You Could
Be Normal?

• A memoir
• Dedicated to 3 mothers

Written following emotional memories, not
necessarily in a chronological order
Constance Winterson Adoptive Mother
Ruth Rendell Literary Mother
Ann S. Biological Mother
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?THE TITLE

• To be Happy
• A temporary sensation of well being.
• A condition to pursue.

• To be Normal
• To be in the norm.
• To follow the "flock".

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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?STRUCTURE
The text is organized into 17 chapters Each
chapter has its own internal organization and
develops its own topic. It is connected to the
others only by the thread of Jeanette's personal
experience.
An intermission
A coda
15 regular chapters
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
C.1 The Wrong Crib The writer describe his
mother telling her she had chosen the wrong child
(during adoption) to make the reader understand
that she felt out of place since early chilhood.
C.2 My Advice To Anybody Is Get Born Right
from the title you can realize that the goal of
this chapter is to prompt the reader to born
spiritually and intellectually. This implies you
are not born yet.
C.3 In The Beginning Was The Word J.Winterson
uses her experience of the reading of the Bible
in his home to underline the importance of the
WORD, which is the basis of writing (the basis of
her life). Word and culture give power.
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

• C.4 The Trouble With A Book...
• This chapter is about growing. J. Winterson shows
  how books could be helpful to grow up. Books
  helped her in growing up because they were her
  only way out from his confinement.

C.5 At Home The title itself helps the reader
to understand that this chapter deal with the
importance of having a HOME not a house. The
writer found a loving home in books.
C.6 Church J. Winterson talks about the biggest
mass rally of the world faith celebrations. How
communities of faithful can change a person from
an individual to "a member of the flock".
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

• C.7 Accrington
• Despite bigotry, 60's and 70's were years of
  community and wormth in those few events that
  attracted the mass. Not like today, when you are
  more open-minded, but individuality prevails.

C.8 The Apocalypse Adolescence changes
radically the way you see things. So also applies
to relationships with parents and lovers. The
first collapses and the other grows.
C.9 English Literature A-Z In this chapter
Jeanette underlines how literature can make you
richer inside and how it has its own life. You
can just like a little part of it and also
completely dislike another one, but it will
change your life.
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

• C.10 This Is The Road
• J. Winterson takes her own experience of the
  change of women's condition from his childhood to
  today to say that humanity understand errors only
  when it crashes against them.

C.11 Art And Lies People do not change, despite
they want to make sure you think so. So is her
mother, so is Oxford itself a school that claims
to be progressive, but it's radical in the
foundations.
C.12 The Night Sea Voyage This chapter is
abaout madness, how you become mad and how you
come to terms with your madness.
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

• C.13 This Appointment Takes Place In The Past
• Right from the title you can understand that this
  chapter is about a contrariness. The language
  used isn't the one that should be used for the
  appointment the writer talks about. Like law is
  not able to approciate certain issues with the
  language that should be utilized.

C.14 Strange Meeting When you grow up and
reach maturity you get to a point in which you
regress to childhood and all hidden fears are
revailed again.
C.15 The Wound Wounds let scars inside you and
they always can be a new starting point. You are
your wounds and your wounds describe you. Only
starting from them you understand that you have
to change something in your life.
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?The
INTERMISSION and the CODA

• It makes the reader think.
• What was that she needed to hide after all she
  told us of ridiculous, shameful and panicful of
  her life?
• Why to omit even 25 years of her life?

• Even if you go back into the wounds, you can
  realize that you're not able to heal them
  anymore.
• This isn't your fault not even their faults.
• Than, who is to blame?