Confining Roles Of Normality In Jeanette Winterson's Sexing The Cherry

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In Sexing the Cherry, Jeanette Winterson cautions her readers that the constructs of “truths” are created to confine the normality of identity based on dominant norms in order to question and change these norms into those fitting of a society based on freedom and equality. Winterson illustrates that such concepts as the constraints of traditional gender roles, the hierarchy of religion and the involvement of primal events contribute to the danger of these supposed “inherent truths” that create what we consider “normality.” By revealing this Nietzschean idea that inherent truths do not exist, Winterson calls for her audience to criticize, analyze and question how these standards of certain social and political expectations construct society …show more content…

The Puritans in London think of themselves as righteous and worthy before God because of their “pure” ways of living. They view other humans that are not in their order vile, unclean, and incapable of God’s true love, even though one message of Christianity states that everyone is God’s children. One instance of this disdain and superiority is when a Puritan makes the statement to the Dog-Woman, “‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness,’” obviously noting her lack of wealth and access to hygienic products; to this she replies, “‘God looks on the heart, not a poor woman’s dress’… but there was no stopping his little sermon, which he gave with his eyes rolled back as piously as a rabbit’s” (Winterson 15). The Dog-Woman reveals to the audience that she is a sinner in her mind, but she still believes that everyone has a chance of being saved by God if they truly wish it. This particular event emphasizing cleanliness and purity, as well as a statement from the Dog-Woman that Preacher Scroggs “makes love to [his wife] through a hole in the sheet… ‘for fear of lust’” (Winterson 22), strongly contradicts the actions that take place in the brothel. For the importance of faithfulness and abstinence from lust, Preacher Scroggs and Neighbor Firebrace commit acts of homosexuality with each other. For the emphasis on cleanliness, they are creative with each other’s bodily fluids in their sexual acts. For the prominence of being faithful to God and having familial love with their fellow men, they burn down the Dog-Woman’s house in the name of Jesus and Oliver Cromwell. In an act of justice for herself and for the death of the king, the Dog-Women sets forth her own means of execution for Preacher Scroggs and Neighbor Firebrace, interrupting their affair and applying her own method of normalizing

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