Ioja Stefania Diana, Ro-En, III

Portraits of male and female characters

in the novel The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

It is said that your discourse reflects your identity, even if by discourse we mean words
or gestures and body language, and by identity any indispensable part of who you are, like sex,
gender, social class, education, religion, the culture youve lived in, the experiences you had etc.

We live in a society where differences in discourse depending on speakers gender seem

to be very clear established, even if nowadays distinctions concerning gender roles appear not to
be very clear-cut. Since women had gained their right to higher education and thus to personal
property or jobs that not very long time ago were suitable exclusively to men, some men may
choose not to study to a university or just to stay home and raise children and do the house
cleaning while their wives are the money makers in their family. As we may expect that a man
to have a higher education and a better paid job rather than a woman, we also may expect a man
to speak or act differently than a woman does. But as we may see a man doing the job weve
expected a woman to do, we also may see people talking or acting like they would belong to the
opposite gender than they actually do.

Literature portrays life and characters taken from it, but we cannot forget that, in fact, it is
the discourse of a single person: the writer. As weve seen, discourse may reveal some
characteristics of the speaker, the gender being an important part of them. We can analyse literary
discourse from two points of view: of the writers gender or of the characters gender. The work I
chose to discuss is written by a woman writer, Jeanette Winterson, who in her novel, The
Passion relates facts from two different points of view: of Henri, a male character, and of
Villanelle, a female character.

The four chapters of the book tell us the story of the two protagonists. First chapter, The
Emperor, is related from Henris point of view and is mainly focused on his passion for
Napoleon Bonaparte, his experience as cook in the army and flashes from his early life. The
second chapter, The Queen of Spades, is told by Villanelles voice and reveals her passion for a
married woman, the description of her city, Venice, her fondness for gambling and disguise, and