“That Awful Occasion”: The Connection Between Adoption and Authorship in the Life Writing of Jeanette Winterson

Abstract

Founded on theory from the interrelated fields of life writing, literary theory, and trauma theory, this thesis critically investigates the correlation between a sense of vocation (authorship) and a desire to escape from an oppressive environment or painful past (adoption, in particular) in the life writing of Jeanette Winterson. How does the representation of adoption as trauma in Jeanette Winterson’s semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) and in her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011) contribute to the construction of her authorship? In Oranges, Winterson is unable or unwilling to work through the trauma of adoption, whereas she seems to employ narrative techniques to actively work it through in Why Be Happy. By means of detailed reading, trauma will be demonstrated to be a site of identity. By implication, recovery has far-reaching effects on an individual’s selfhood and an author’s authorship and posture.