Literature Essay Samples
[...] Transgression in Jeanette Winterson's The Passion. The fact that Winterson uses two narrators shows the ambivalence of history. According to the author there is no unified, single history but an infinite number of histories. Villanelle's opening description of Venice supports this, with the maze-like city as a metaphor for history. The concept of finding your way in it questions the existence of this right way at all (p. 49). This analogy seems to suggest that there is no predestined exact route, like the route-ways of Venice - history flows and changes. There are no pre-ordained boundaries or paths that must be taken. If the true events of history are that same place we strive to attain, then our present attempt to recreate them "never go by the same route" (p. 49). The traditional view of history, a history of the ruling classes sees the past as it would view Venice - as something we can locate on a map. A landscape in which, if you use the correct compass and ask the right people, you will find the right way. For Winterson, though, history is like Venice, a mercurial city, where "all things are possible" (p. 49). [...]