Truth and History

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  • Truth and History
    • Sub
      • Celebrates the female position, reworking the historical fabric
      • Subverts the roles of masculinity: conceit of woman's insertion in the male sphere
      • Female success: 'Hat trick', winning the 'Grand Slam'. Related to femininity: 'tampon', 'blood' with teammates singing her 'name', the ball a 'precious egg'
      • Traditionally masculine championship and feminine intimacies= the modern woman, a conglomerate of Rhea and Hercules
      • Women a valued part of history: 'carried shoulder high by the boys'
      • Liberation: Woman steps in for Ringo to 'climb on the drums, clever fingered and thumbed' inciting 'screams' 'hot as sex'; the seats 'wet'
    • Oranges
      • Challenges the truth of the patriarchal histories that construct humanity's understanding of the world
        • 'The people who found Atlantis' aligned with men who live 'with mermaids'- no difference between history and myth; masculine history reduced to 'the fishiest of fish tales'
        • History is told according to a lens 'tinted, tilted, smashed'
      • Manipulates narrative to disrupt the literary order: meta narratives ('Oranges is an experimental novel'- Winterson, 1991)
      • Deuteronomy destabilises the master narrative
      • Winterson warns against 'stuffing down' these masculine rearrangements of the truth. Advocates conscious questioning
      • Female voice delivers the Deuteronomy declaration; intercepts an entire culture, the 'little fleas' on the backs of 'big fleas'
        • Bible Deuteronomy records the 10 Cs
        • Corresponds most with the Bible as it grips the reader directly: 'if you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches'
      • The old order is 'rotten and rotting' in the 'gut[s]' of lying patriarchs
    • The Virgin's Memo
      • Pastiche Apocrypha
      • Mary victim to the canonical process of the proto orthodox church
      • Contemporary tone: 'Maybe not … son': modern feminist revolution
      • Pride in the maternal presence: Jesus crafted from his mother's love rather than divine providence- the Gospel is 'about the way mothers always stand by their children regardless'
      • Alphabetisation of the diseases: depth of empathy and knowledge from 'abscesses' to 'wasps'

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