Revisi(ti)ng History: Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate and the Transformation of Historical Novels

Authors

  • Ksenija Kondali

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2016.8.15

Keywords:

historical novel, women’s experience, identity, history, narrative, power

Abstract

Since the 1990s, women’s historical novels have received increased attention, largely due to their compelling rewriting of (particularly women’s) history. Numerous authors—many of them women—have effected a transformation of the traditional historical novel by using this genre’s creative space to re-imagine women’s history. Anchored in relevant theoretical discourse and critical writing, this paper analyzes Jeanette Winterson’s recent novel The Daylight Gate (2012) against this background. Similar to Winterson’s previous novels, The Daylight Gate is committed to probing ways of representing the past. Combining narrative suspense, the style of the Gothic story, and different motifs, Winterson produces multifaceted writing that echoes postmodern concepts of historical narrativization, while also reflecting on gender relations and the formation of gendered identity. The discussion focuses on this novel as a medium of re-imagining and revising dominant historical narratives to voice women’s experiences and oppositional perspectives, compelling us to consider the results of experimentation and transformation within this genre.

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Published

2016-11-30

How to Cite

Kondali, K. (2016). Revisi(ti)ng History: Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate and the Transformation of Historical Novels. Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies, 8(1), 245–259. https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2016.8.15

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 1 (2016): BELLS - volume 8

Section

LITERARY STUDIES

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