Ballarin Claudia VA Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? By Jeannette Winterson STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

Ballarin Claudia VA Author: Jeanette Winterson Genre: Memoire It is different from autobiography. The chronological sequence is not so important and it is flexible Facts and language is linked to author’s emotions and personality  emotional truth is more important than the real truth. In addition writing a memoir the author should heal his/her hurts.

Ballarin Claudia VA THE COVER The picture represents a child on the beach. I think that the child is Jeanette Winterson. So the reader experts that in the book is about the writer’s life.

Ballarin Claudia VA THE TITLE question: what is its function?  To take the reader attention and to create connections between the reader and the writer. Repletion of the verb to Be  I think that the writer introduces the content of the book: the life of a person who wants to be, to live. Happy are linked to life  a way to live life and every human being try to reach it. Normal are linked to life  normality coincides with mass’s life.

Ballarin Claudia VA DEDICATION DEDICATION “To my three mothers” -Constance Winterson  adoptive mother - Ruth Rendell  literary mother -Ann S.  birth/biological mother J. Winterson uses the word mother to underline the importance of the three women. The mother is a woman who grows up and helps her child. TRIBUTES She thanks all the people who helped her or believed in her.

Ballarin Claudia VA CONTENTS There are fifteen chapters and every chapter has an own title. Intermission (between chapters 11 and 12) The importance of wherefore. Time is not important. We are interested in art because it is not time-bound Everyone’s 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.

Ballarin Claudia VA SETTING Accrington: the place in which she lived after the adoption. She lived in a poor house with strange step-parents. She couldn’t be herself becuase her step- mother thought what makes you happy is a sin: she only could read the Bible and pray. 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.

Ballarin Claudia VA CHARACTERS The book is a memoir so the protagonist is the writer, Jeanette Winterson. For this reason in the book you cannot find her physical description but you can know her way of thinking, her behaviors, her thoughts and relationship with the other characters thanks to different situations. The protagonist: J.Winterson

Ballarin Claudia VA CHARACTERS 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 doesn’t 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. Wrs. Winterson

Ballarin Claudia VA Ballarin Claudia V A as