Construction of Gender: Spaces in Between and Within in Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing The Cherry

Abstract

The paper seeks to study the social construction of gender and the binaries existing within it. To do so, the paper will be focusing on the systematic forces of oppression of societal surveillance that seeks to appropriate ‘normal’ and neglect others who are not abiding by either masculinity or femininity. The paper will be also studying a narrative that is actively reversing these binaries and creating a space that raises the possibility of a category beyond masculinity and femininity. In order to study this, the paper will delve into Foucault’s prison theory to study the phenomenon of ‘appropriate behaviour’ in terms of being a woman, wife and mother, and how the public and private discourses come into play.