Writers
The author uses psychological imagery to make a self-revelation about her. The imagery is based on assumptions about behavioral patterns combined with an allusion to a popular imaginative trope:
“I began to realize that I had company. Writers are often exiles, outsiders, runaways and castaways. These writers were my friends. Every book was a message in a bottle. Open it.”
Readers
In addition to defining herself as a writer, the author constructs a psychological profile of her based upon the other end of that partnership. Writers tend to be readers—though one can easily spot the exception when they come across a bad writer.
“Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.”
Facts and Religious Fanaticism
The memoir is at times a harrowing tale of living in a cult. Just because the members are Christians does not make it any less a cult. A certain achingly painful bit of imagery is attributed to her mother as becoming a recurring motif and the author bluntly reveals the way that simple common-sense cuts through such fanatical belief—unless you a believer:
“When my mother was angry with me, which was often, she said, ‘The Devil led us to the wrong crib.’ The image of Satan taking time off from the Cold War and McCarthyism to visit Manchester in 1960 – purpose of visit: to deceive Mrs. Winterson – has a flamboyant theatricality to it.”
Jack and the Beanstalk
The familiar fairy tale is appropriated by the author as imagery to describe the overarching theme which links her books and stories: the victory of the underdog against a seemingly overmatched opponent. The point of the appropriation is Jack didn’t get away with everything belonging to the giant and, even more so, had to sacrifice any opportunity for complete domination in order to enjoy his scaled-down win:
“when the giant tries to climb after Jack, the beanstalk has to be chopped down pronto. This suggests…life is full of surprising temporary elements – we get somewhere we couldn’t go otherwise and we profit from the trip, but we can’t stay there, it isn’t our world, and we shouldn’t let that world come crashing down into the one we can inhabit. The beanstalk has to be chopped down. But the large-scale riches from the ‘other world’ can be brought into ours, just as Jack makes off with the singing harp and the golden hen.”
