Breaking Away from Tradition: ‘Sexing the Cherry’ as a Postmodern Text

that experience in her book shows that she wanted the novel to be fresh and new.

What could also make this novel not seem like a post-modern book is that they made it has poetic and fantastical passages. One point is when Jordan and the Dog Woman were on the Thames and they saw the sunrise shows poetic elements which actually show a more romantic side which isn’t post-modern. Poetic and romantic features have been featured in Victorian set books which may be because Winterson wanted to add on to a little bit of traditional text, but most of her text used is post-modern. Other people may actually say this is post-modern because she is placing her conscious mind into the text and perception. This would show post-modernist text in the novel.

The book shows post-modernism by having two narrators; Jordan and Dog Woman. Usually there would be one narrator telling most of the plot, but here there are two viewpoints that have different opinions and have experienced different things during their time. Jordan being the free spirited person wanting to find out who he is and going on spiritual quests has a different intake on his surrounding while the Dog Woman has stayed with the company of herself and her dog till she found Jordan. The novel also has four individual parts; Jordan and the Dog Women before the Civil War, The 12 Dancing Princesses, 1649 and some year later on. This shows post-modernism by presenting non-linear narrative by not going in order and changing the expectation of the reader as they read.

The novel ‘Sexing the Cherry’ is regarded as post-modern text because of how the

way Winterson wrote the book. It is written in a non-linear time which means that the plot is not going in consecutive order. The first chapter is of Jordan as a grown person and describing his setting then it jumps to when Dog Woman found him and losing him in a crowd of people. The jumps show post-modernism by not following rules of going in order making her novel individual and different to most Victorian based books.To conclude, ‘Sexing the Cherry’ may be considered as a post-modern text because it challenges things that wouldn’t be expected in a novel set in the Victorian era where everything was in classes and in order but here, it shows Jordan cross dressing, him having to travel which was a luxury and considering that he was a foundling makes it even more surprising because he started out with nothing other than Dog Woman.

Also, having two narrators (Jordan and Dog Woman) makes it feel like there are two stories being told. This shows post-modern text because if drifts away from traditional writing.