WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL?

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WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL?
Author Jeanette Winterson Genre Memoire

• Events are emotional describe
• There is not a chronology

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THE TITLE
WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL?

• Considering the title the reader focuses the
  attention on the adjectives happy and normal. It
  seems as if they are opposite.
• It is a question so, the reader understands in
  the novel there are two different points of
  view happy and normal have two different
  meanings for two differente people (Jeanette and
  her mother)
• In the novel the phrase is said by the
  protagonists mother after Jeanette said her she
  wanted to be happy (to follow her feelings) so
• normal means to be religious, not to love a
  girl, to read only the Bible
• happy means to be what you want

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DEDICATION
TO MY THREE MOTHERS

• Biological mother
• Step-mother
• Litterally mother Ruth Rendell

She is a writer who deals with themes like
romantic obsessions, misperceived communication
and the humanity of the criminal involved. Her
characteristic is to pay particular attention on
the characters psychology .

• J. Winterson considers her a mother because she
  deals with the same themes.
• Romantic obsession Jeanettes mother wanted
  any kind of physical contact with her husband,
  Jeanettes romantic obsession for a girl
• Misperceived communication

TRIBUTES
She thanks all the people who helped her or
believed in her.
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CONTENTS

• There are fifteen chapters and every chapter has
  an own title.
• Intermission (between chapters 12 and 13)
• The importance of wherefore. Time is not
  important, so the reader understands why
  J.Winterson has chosen to write a memoire and not
  an autobiography.

Life is subdivided by emotions and imagination
not by years

• We are interested in art because it is not
  time-bound
• Everyones life has a cover near the narrative
  part (reality)

Coda the narrator ends her novel speaking about
her feelings during the writing of the novel and
about the meeting with her birth-mother.
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CHARACTERS MRS. WINTERSON
The characterization of Mrs. Winterson is
grottesque indeed the narrator pay attention on
the negative aspects and she overstate and deform
her phisical appereance. Mrs. Winterson is fat,
she doesnt want to sleep with her husband (maybe
she was victim of a refusal),she is a fanatical
religious woman and she has two sets of false
teeth and a revolver in the duster drawer,
waiting for Armageddon.
JEANETTE
Jeanette is both the protagonist and the lyrical
I so she isnt describe physically but towards
her emotions and opinions. She hate her
step-mother, she doesnt recognize herself in the
mass and she is looking for happiness. She is
obsessed by love because she has never found it,
so she decided to look for it, but she is also
afraid of loss, so she is afraid to be involved.
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WHERE YOU WAS BORN IS IMPORTANT
Manchester the place in which she was born. The
narrator says it is a good place to be born. In
the second chapter she describe it underlining
its double-faced spirit. It is the archetype of
the industrialized cities.
Accrington the place in which she lived after
the adoption. She lived in a poor house with
strange step-parents. She couldnt be herself
becuase her step-mother thought what makes you
happy is a sin she only could read the Bible and
pray.
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THE MEANING OF WRITING
As Jeanette says at page 5 she didnt decide to
become a write. She needed and needs to escape
suffering. She had to re-write hurt. She was
adopted, so she invented the missing part of the
story as well as she invented her imaginary
friend, Elsie. It explains why she writed a
memoire and why she mixed reality with fiction.
THE MEANING OF READING
Jeanette finds in reading the way to relieve
herself from her unhappy life. Books permit her
to understand who Jeanette is, and maybe from
them she was able to become not afraid of her
mother and to express her real feelings, as for
example her homosexuality.