Years ago I was lucky enough to work with Elspeth Graham at Liverpool John Moores’ University on a course entitled ‘Literature and Madness’. We both were keen to teach contemporary writing alongside such fabulous ‘classics’ as James’s Turn of the Screw and Bulgakov’s remarkable The Master and Margarita. We wanted Winterson to feature on the course and the first year course already used Winteron’s hugely popular Oranges are Not the Only fruit. What was singularly memorable about our decison to teach Sexing the Cherry over The Passion was the reason: for although Elspeth and I both felt The Passion Winteron’s best we strangely felt unable to discuss it. It was simply ‘there’. You read it and it held you and spoke to as only an intimate could. It reads as a very private conversation with a trusted friend.
And as Elspeth told me: ‘how can we discuss a book that has no unconscious?’
Is there such a thing I wondered and have continued to wonder to this day. For there is a sense in reading The Passion that it is all ‘there’. It is finished, there are no gaps, and the resonances have conjured up a narrative totality that leaves nothing unsaid or hidden. So we read the novel and sense( and I use this term truly) that Winterson’s protagonists have brought to the surface the hidden recesses of human experience.
And what could be a better example than the literal animation of ‘losing one’s heart’? We often use language carelessly or unguardedly, and forget that it is our language that makes us. Winterson shows us what losing our heart actually means- one of the most magical and inspired moments in contemporary fiction.
Her heart was beating.
not possible.
I tell you her heart was beating.
I am telling you stories trust me.(!!!)