Abstract
"Sexing the Cherry" by Jeanette Winterson is a reading experience as major themes of life are defamiliarized and gives the readers keys to reconsider his or her view of the world. Jeanette Winterson was born in a protestant family. She had to fight to conceal her religious education and her homosexuality. She faced her family's prejudices and realized that her conception and perception of the world was quite different from her family's views. Sexing the Sherry deeply questions the role of women in society and especially of their body.
The novel is the story of Jordan, an orphan found floating on the River Thames and of the Dog Woman, a giantess. At the centre of the book are the stories of the Twelve Dancing Princess. It is the rewriting of the original tale which narrates how twelve princesses went and danced all night long without be allowed by their father.
Jeanette Winterson varies and adds to this tale in Sexing the Cherry, in which the old soldier is a prince with 11 brothers, each of them marries a sister except the youngest, who escapes before her wedding to the prince.
How is the rewriting of the tale a metamorphosis in itself? How is metamorphosis process defamiliarized? What does mean metamorphosis in the novel? How are the intertextual references in the original text questioned by the rewriting?
