Jeanette Winterson brings humour and understanding to a fraught childhood
WARNING: This audio contains discussion of suicide.
This fall, as Writers & Company wraps up after a remarkable 33 year run, we're revisiting episodes selected from the show's archive. This interview originally aired in 2012.
England's Jeanette Winterson is best known for her debut semi-autobiographical novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a coming-of-age story about a foundling raised in an evangelical household. The novel parallels the British writer's own upbringing in a Pentecostal family, including her challenging relationship with her adoptive mother and her sexual experience with another girl at the age of 16.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit won the Costa Book Award for First Novel in 1985 and became an international bestseller. It was made into a BBC mini-series, with Winterson herself writing the award-winning screenplay.
Her latest book is Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories, a collection of chilling tales that explore the boundaries between technology and the supernatural.
In 2012, Winterson joined Eleanor Wachtel to discuss her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, which reveals the true story about her childhood and her search for love, belonging and a mother.
Winterson spoke to Eleanor Wachtel from London.
Mrs. Winterson and me
"My adoptive mother was the kind of woman who didn't want anyone to know her, except for the one person in the world that she designated as suitable for that mighty task. Unfortunately that one person in the world was me — nobody else, not my father, not any of her family.
"She was solitary. She was like a grey tower but at the same time living with her, it was like living with the Secret Service. Because although she didn't want anybody to know her, she wanted to know everything about everybody else.
"Mrs. Winterson wanted me to be a pal to her. She had no friends, so that was very important. She really believed that I would be the person who would change her life. The sad thing is, I could have done it. Just like Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, I could have been that golden ticket that took her out of that life that she hated. But I came in the wrong package.
Just like Charlie And The Chocolate Factory , I could have been that golden ticket that took her out of that life that she hated. But I came in the wrong package.
"We lived in that kind of fairytale atmosphere, in that I'd been plucked out from under a stone somewhere with no visible origins. There was a part of me that she wanted to be transforming, magical — but she just couldn't accept it because I didn't tick all the boxes."
On a quest
"I love Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and stories about the Holy Grail.
"I was always searching for something that was lost — and that is the quintessential Grail story. You find as a writer, and I hope as a reader, some key stories that define and mark your life. These places where you can put yourself for safe-keeping and texts you keep working with because they continue to prompt understanding about yourself.
"They're talismanic. It's very personal, very private, it's a dialogue between yourself and the book. It's like lovers' talk — something that you never tire of.
I love... stories about the Holy Grail. I was always searching for something that was lost — and that is the quintessential Grail story.
"I found that to be the case, with that text. I always go back to it. I thought maybe that would change, and I'd get over the idea that there's always something that you're searching for that you never quite find, which is the Holy Grail.
"But I've never got over it."
How I met my mother
"I felt physically sick [meeting my birth mother for the first time].
"When the cab was pulling up outside the house I had a hysterical impulse to sing Cheer up ye saints of God, which is a song we used to sing at the church because evangelicals were always cheerful.
"So there was this awful feeling of not knowing and thinking, who's going to open the door? What will I see? This heart beating, dry-mouthed terror. And of course, I had been a baby when my mother gave me up. The point with the parent is that they are a grown-up — so they have some skills of self reflection — whereas the baby knows nothing but loss. The baby is just a bundle of sensation and experience in that moment.
But something has gone on that's enormous because it's like a branding iron. It marks you but you've no idea what it is. So I was really in the state of that small child again. Nothing about me now can deal with this moment of her opening the door.
So I was really in the state of that small child again. Nothing about me now can deal with this moment of her opening the door.
"And then she did. Of course it was all right. And I discovered all kinds of things. I've always thought of myself as a lone wolf, an only child and a rather solitary and independent person. And then I discover that I had hundreds of cousins.
"My mother was one of ten children and they were all ballroom dancing champions and lived to be a hundred. It was terrifying."
Open to change
"I think change is important. Nothing is solid, that's for sure.
"Everything changes around us — why wouldn't we change too? It's probably healthy if we can and if we can admit to being wrong without beating yourself up. The things that I regret in life are not errors of judgment but failures of feeling.
"Feeling in that sense was what was hard for me. I mean there was quite a lot of me that was held in. Not because I haven't been a good friend and an enthusiastic lover — I've been both of those — but there was the core self that was not available.
The things that I regret in life are not errors of judgment but failures of feeling.
"That was a product of being brought up in the way that I was; I was just having to save myself and had to protect myself in some way. And that has changed. A lot of those defences have gone.
"A lot of that protective layer is gone. I couldn't go on protecting myself. I couldn't live in that way."
Jeanette Winterson's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
If you or someone you know is struggling, here's where to get help:
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Talk Suicide Canada: 1-833-456-4566 (phone) | 45645 (text between 4 p.m. and midnight ET).
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Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868 (phone), live chat counselling on the website.
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Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention: Find a 24-hour crisis centre.
This guide from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health outlines how to talk about suicide with someone you're worried about.
