Jeanette Winterson herself does not want to be seen as a postmodernist writer. ¹ However, many of her works show significant features, which identify them to be postmodern, Sexing the Cherry 2 being one of them.

The title of the book refers to the art of grafting as utilized in agriculture and horticulture. It is mostly applied on fruit trees to produce plants which show a combination of desired characteristics. For example, a plant which may have roots that are resistant to cold is fused with a plant which grows a special kind of fruit or blossom but would otherwise perish in winter. In the process of grafting the bark is sliced open and a twig of another tree is inserted into the cut and fastened in place. The original tree provides the twig with nourishment and allows it to grow. “[S]o the two take advantage of each other and produce a third kind, without seed or parent.” [78]. Both trees become one. The motif of fusing things together in order to form something that is closer to perfection can be detected throughout the whole novel.

The form of the novel itself is a graft of perspectives, with its alternating narrations of the Dog-Woman and Jordan as well as their future counter parts and the stories of the twelve dancing princesses. The last ones of which include various allusions to other texts, among them Browning’s His Last Duchess 3 and a rewritten version of Bothers Grimm’s The Frog King and Rapunzel, and almost every one ends with a surprising or ironic twist. “In different ways, these intertextual rewritings serve to challenge patriarchal master narratives”. ⁴ It is a well established feature of the postmodern novel to question not only the omniscient narrator but also the strict separation of literary genres. In fact, the postmodern novel frequently “blends several forms within the same discourse.” ⁵ Brothers Grimm’s The Twelve Dancing Princesses is a fairy tale as well. It is grafted into the novel and as Jordan is looking for the twelfth princess Fortunata both literary genres intertwine and eventually grow together.

Jordan himself desires the art of grafting to be applied to him “so that [he] could be a hero like [Tradescant].” [79]. This is due to the fact that he wants to know a mean to his life. He feels uncertain about his identity and who he really is. One reason why he starts to travel with Tradescant is to find an answer to that question: “I’m not looking for God, only for myself.” [102]. During one of his many reflexions he notices a disruption

¹ See Sonya Andermahr, Jeanette Winterson (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) 16.

² Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry (London: Bloomsbury, 1989).

³ See Andermahr 69.

⁴ Andermahr. 69.

⁵ Janet Paterson, Postmodernism and the Quebec Novel (Toronto etc.: University of Toronto Press, 1994) 22.

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between the body and the inner self. Even though the body is finite, death does not put an end to someone’s existence as such:

^{“The inward life tells us that we are multiple not single, and that our one existence is really countless existences holding hands like those cut-out paper dolls, but unlike the dolls not coming to an end. […] Our lives could be stacked together like plates on a waiter’s hand. Only the top is showing, but the rest are there and by mistake we discover them.” [90, 91].} As postmodern novels are characterized by different forms of disruption, Sexing the Cherry does not only include “spatio-temporal disorder, achronology” and “fragmented representation of characters” but also the “splitting of the ‘I’ narrative” ⁶ . Young protagonist Jordan has another existence in the character of Nicholas Jordan whose narrative voice is set in the future. They are different persons by body and time, yet they share not only the name but many similarities. Both worship famous heroes of world history, enjoy playing with toy boats in their childhood and eventually travel the sea as young adults. Like two of the paper dolls mentioned beforehand they may not share the same place but stem from the same piece of paper. This theory can be applied to a grafted tree as well. One of them can be taken for the twig which grows out of the original tree. From close up they appear to be separate beings and biologically spoken so they are. However, viewed from afar it becomes apparent that they form one entity. Jordan can feel this disruption which gives him a sentiment of being incomplete: “When Tradescant asked me to go with him as an explorer I thought I might be a hero after all, and bring back something that mattered, and in the process find something I had lost. The sense of loss was hard to talk about. What could I have lost when I never had anything to begin with? I had myself to begin with, and that is what I lost.” [100, 101].

At first he tries to find completion through love. Some people talk about their second half when referring to the love of their life and in ancient Greece it was believed that humans are only born half and must spend their lives in search of that one human who forms their missing part. He has affairs with women, but in the end he always finds himself “without any understanding what it was that ravaged [him]. The beloved is shallow, witless, heartless, mercenary, calculating, silly.” [74]. Even his object of desire, Fortunata, is not the one to complete him. She tells him the story of Greece goddess Artemis, which is in turn her own. She also describes herself as being “in her service” [131] because she, like Artemis in her story and Jordan for that matter, feels the multiplicity of her being:

“She saw herself by the fire as a child, a woman, a hunter, a queen. Grabbing the child she lost sight of the woman, and when she drew her bow the queen fled. What would it matter if she crossed the world and hunted down every living creature so long as her separate selves eluded her? In the end when no one was left she would have to confront herself.” [131].

⁶ Paterson 21.

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