Heteronormatif Sınırların Ötesinde Dans: Jeanette Winterson’ın On İki Dans Eden Prenses’i

Dancing Beyond Heteronormative Boundaries: Jeanette Winterson’s The Twelve Dancing Princesses

The Twelve Dancing Princesses, written by the Grimm Brothers, is one of the well known fairy tales that has been adapted and rewritten several times in different languages, cultures, and texts. Among those works is Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (1989), which incorporates the post-modern retelling of this fairy tale. In the second chapter of the novel, Winterson retells the story of the twelve princesses using intertextual allusions to the traditional fairy tale that embodies androcentric biases and gender constraints submerged within the patriarchal system. However, in this new recreation, the writer, initially, challenges the heteronormativity and its phallocentrically constructed gender roles, then, she demonstrates to the passivized and tamed princesses, ways of violating male-assigned gender roles and identities by creating an all-encompassing space in which there is no othering and violence. Thus, considering the issues regarding heteronormativity and its boundaries and grounding its argument in feminist and queer literary critical theory, in this study, I have aimed to display how the fluid dynamics of gender construction can be revealed by transgressing the heteronormative boundaries and phallocentric dictations, and how wo/men can live happily ever after in accordance with ‘their own tastes’.

___

  • Barry, K. (1984). Female sexual slavery. NYU.
  • Barthes, R. (1990). S/Z. (R. Miller, Trans.) Blackwell.
  • Barthes, R. (1992). The death of the author. In P. W. Philip Rice, Modern Literary Theory (pp. 114-118). Blackwell.
  • Butler, J. (2007). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge.
  • Carroll, L. (1996). Sylvie and Bruno concluded in the tomplete illustrated works of Lewis Carroll. Wordsworth Editions.
  • Cixous, H. C. (1976). The laugh of the Medusa. Signs, 1(14), 875-893.
  • Dworkin, A. (1974). Woman hating. Dutton.
  • Dworkin, A. (1983). Right-wing women: The politics of domesticated females. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
  • Freud, S. (1971). Three essays on the theory of sexuality (J. Strachey, Trans.) Avon.
  • Gonzalez, S. (1996 ). Winterson’s sexing the cherry: Re-writing woman through fantasy. In C. C.-G. García, Gender I-deology (pp. 281–295). Rodopi.
  • Grimm, J. &. (1964). The twelve dancing princesses. In D. A. M., Twelve dancing princesses (pp. 23-28). Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j. ctt1c0gms9.4
  • Grimm, J. &. (1992). The complete fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. (J. Zipes, Trans.) Bantam
  • Hite, M. (2000). Virginia Woolf’s two bodies. Genders Online Journal (31), 1-22.
  • Lacan, J. (1977). The seminar (A. Sheridan, Trans.) Hogarth.
  • Lieberman, M. R. (1972). Some day my prince will come: Female acculturation through the fairy tale. College English, 34(3), 383-395.
  • Makinen, M. (2005). The novels of Jeanette Winterson: A reader’s guide to essential criticism. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Palmer, P. (1993). Contemporary lesbian writing: Dreams, desire, difference. Open University.
  • Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. Signs, 5(4), 631-660. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173834
  • Rich, A. (1985). The fact of a doorframe: Poems selected and new 1950-1984. Norton.
  • Rubinson, G. J. (2005). The fiction of Rushdie, Barnes, Winterson and Carter: Breaking cultural and literary boundaries in the work of four postmodernists. McFarland&Company.
  • Sherwin, S. (1998). The politics of women’s health: Exploring agency and autonomy. Temple University.
  • Thomas, S. H. (1999). Undermining a Grimm tale: A feminist reading of “the worn-out dancing shoes”. Marvels & Tales, 13(2), 170-183. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/41388541
  • Ulivieri, S. (1999). Modelli e messaggi educativi al femminile nella fiaba. In F. Cambi, Itinerari nellafiaba. Autori, testi, figure (pp. 237-254). (Susanna Barsotti, Trans.) ETS.
  • Winterson, J. (1989). Sexing the cherry. Vintage.
  • Winterson, J. (1991). Oranges are not the only fruit. Vintage.