With &1xbet online sports betting ;money and a room of her own&1xbet online sports betting ;: The Legacy of Woolf's Advice for

the Woman Artist at Century's End

Karin E. Westman, College of Charleston

[Paper presented at the Ninth Annual Virginia Woolf Conference, June 1999]

Women who want to escape the label &1xbet online sports betting ;woman writer&1xbet online sports betting ; (as opposed to writer--the masculine norm) have had to write like one of the boys, de-sexing themselves. Super-feminine lady writers, if they stick to their nice nook, will be both praised and despised for doing what comes naturally. But the woman writer who refuses these categories blows the scheme sky-high and incurs the wrath of the gods. (Michele Roberts in The Independent, 1997)

Perhaps more than any other late-twentieth century British woman writer, Jeanette Winterson has taken to heart Woolf's advice in A Room of One's Own that &1xbet online sports betting ;a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction&1xbet online sports betting ; (4), but Winterson has also, as Michele Roberts points out, &1xbet online sports betting ;incur[red] the wrath&1xbet online sports betting ; of the cultural gods as a result. Winterson has used her literary and financial success to secure a life centered around her work and her concerns-- much to the fascination and horror of the British literary establishment and popular press. Winterson challenges the established &1xbet online sports betting ;rules&1xbet online sports betting ; of writing, publishing, reviewing--in sum, the cultural expectations for the woman artist in British society--constructing her life in order to argue against, as Woolf does in AROO, two cultural myths: that the artist can remain aloof from the material concerns necessary for the production of art, and that gender and its attendant social roles do not influence the production of that art. Continually re-inserting her body, her gender, and her capital into their portrait, Winterson wrestles with the British press and literary establishment for the right to construct her social role-- and live her life--on her own terms.

In following Woolf's advice for the woman writer, then, Winterson has struck a nerve in British culture, and the public response she elicits, I will argue, illustrates the persistence of gendered and class-based expectations for a woman artist in Britain today. Instead of tolerating Winterson as another Martin Amis or, in one reviewer's comparison, excusing her behavior as comparable to &1xbet online sports betting ;old Papa [Hemingway]'s bravado&1xbet online sports betting ; (Faulks 9), the press presents Winterson's decidedly un-feminine and nouveaux riche behavior with a combination of fascination and ire. Indeed, she is taken to task for the very circumstances which have allowed her to produce her art. Winterson may have garnered the proverbial L500 and a room of her own, but her self-presentation and her resulting representation in the British press encourage us to revisit Woolf's advice and cultural analysis of the woman artist in a patriarchal society with a contemporary eye.

First, the proverbial room and L500. Winterson is an extremely successful British woman writer: &1xbet online sports betting ;At a rough estimate,&1xbet online sports betting ; according to interviewer Angela Lambert, in 1997 &1xbet online sports betting ;[Winterson] probably earn[ed] L200,000 to L250,000 a year,&1xbet online sports betting ; placing her &1xbet online sports betting ;among the top 50 English writers for earning power&1xbet online sports betting ; (Lambert 16). She has therefore more than met the contemporary equivalent of Woolf's recommended L500, which would be a mere L18,000.(1) For her room, Winterson purchased in 1997 an 18th century home in Spitalfields, now elegantly furnished with rare first editions. Financial security has also allowed Winterson to take control of her art during the past eight years, removing herself as much as possible from the slings and arrows of the increasingly number-crunching publishing world, much as Woolf did by founding the Hogarth Press. Incorporated in 1992, Winterson is her own agent; she also writes her own contracts, having studied contract law. Thanks to her money, Winterson is able to make professional decisions calculated to challenge the determining influence of the publishing industry, thus gaining control over her art and her life.

Winterson's self-styled portrait as artist, however, jars and tantalizes the British media, who in turn struggle for authorship of her public image. The media's response illustrates how the titular sound bite from AROO fails to account for the complexity of women writers' experiences in contemporary British society: Winterson has acquired the money and the room, but not necessarily acceptance for her artistic success. To explain this cultural response, which ranges from bemusement to virulent condemnation, we must return to the more complex subtleties of Woolf's cultural analysis: to her discussions of the masculine privilege of the husband/father, the looking-glass role that heterosexual femininity plays to empower masculinity, and the perceived monstrosity of women writers who stray beyond the margins of their expected social roles.

Winterson's challenges to the literary establishment take any number of forms, but have been summed up by the British press under the heading &1xbet online sports betting ;egotistical arrogance,&1xbet online sports betting ; since, as reviewer Angela Lambert remarks, &1xbet online sports betting ;The English prefer their writers modest&1xbet online sports betting ; (16). Most British journalists have deemed Winterson's &1xbet online sports betting ;cost of fame and greatness&1xbet online sports betting ; to be &1xbet online sports betting ;willed monstrosity,&1xbet online sports betting ; if simultaneously acknowledging, as The Independent does under the headline &1xbet online sports betting ;Mad, Bad, or Plain Brilliant,&1xbet online sports betting ; that &1xbet online sports betting ;her arrogance is not the result of deluded fantasy: it is as deliberate as her sentences themselves&1xbet online sports betting ; (10). Winterson's pose is indeed a &1xbet online sports betting ;deliberate&1xbet online sports betting ; arrogance, calculated to &1xbet online sports betting ;provoke&1xbet online sports betting ; the establishment of publishers and media watchdogs as much as the general reading public. Asked in 1992 what book she would nominate for &1xbet online sports betting ;Book of the Year,&1xbet online sports betting ; she offered her own critically neglected Written on the Body. Asked in 1993 to nominate the greatest living author, Winterson nominated herself. In her 1998 &1xbet online sports betting ;Afterword&1xbet online sports betting ; to her collection of short stories, The World and Other Places, Winterson blithely proclaims that she does not &1xbet online sports betting ;write fee unseen&1xbet online sports betting ; (232).

It's not so much Winterson's &1xbet online sports betting ;construction&1xbet online sports betting ; of her self which elicits the press's response (though her sometimes contradictory &1xbet online sports betting ;truths&1xbet online sports betting ; about her past do so, too), but the self she creates. Indeed, the majority of reviews of Winterson's literary work published in the British press, and especially the English press, begin not with a comment about her literary productions, but a comment about her character or about past or recent acts. Harvey Porlock, in one of his bi-weekly columns for the Sunday Times which offer a meta-commentary on current books reviews, even replicates the critical climate he so astutely describes. In his column titled &1xbet online sports betting ;No, No, Jeanette!&1xbet online sports betting ; Porlock begins: &1xbet online sports betting ;Brilliant, immodest and bloody-minded, Jeanette Winterson brings out the school prefect in her critics. Often, as in reviews for her new collection The World and Other Places, they seem to be assessing, with the deepest disappointment, Jeanette's character, general attitude and contribution to the school&1xbet online sports betting ; (&1xbet online sports betting ;No, No, Jeanette!&1xbet online sports betting ;). As Porlock notes, Winterson's writing comes last: Winterson's private and public acts, her &1xbet online sports betting ;mad&1xbet online sports betting ; character, displace her literary work as the focus of the profile or review.

But apparently, only the British might think she has &1xbet online sports betting ;gone mad&1xbet online sports betting ; (Gerrard, &1xbet online sports betting ;Self-Produced&1xbet online sports betting ;): Winterson's provocations are decidedly a national phenomenon. According to journalist Gilbert Adair, &1xbet online sports betting ;[n]one of my Parisian acquaintances has the faintest interest in, or frequently knowledge of, Jeanette Winterson's boundless self-puffery&1xbet online sports betting ; (&1xbet online sports betting ;Talkin' 'bout my generation&1xbet online sports betting ; 26), and we hear little of her antics here in the States. So, what nerve has Winterson struck in the British literary world to provoke such heated debate and often deprecating comments? She is certainly not the only young author engaged in such &1xbet online sports betting ;mad&1xbet online sports betting ; outbursts. As Nicci Gerrard notes, &1xbet online sports betting ;[Winterson] can be abnormally arrogant--but so is Martin Amis, who once said that he wanted to be remembered in the same breath as Shakespeare, and no one thinks he is mad&1xbet online sports betting ; (&1xbet online sports betting ;The Ultimate Self-Produced Woman&1xbet online sports betting ; 7). Gerrard does not explain the discrepancy she has noted between the reception of Winterson's and Amis' claims to greatness, but I would argue that a determining factor--if not the determining factor--is gender, complemented by class.

Winterson's widely publicized &1xbet online sports betting ;masculine&1xbet online sports betting ; behavior--exchanging sex for sets of Le Creuset pots and pans as a young woman in London when she serviced lonely married women from the Home Counties, making her home comfortable with first editions and hired secretaries, living with her partner (a wifely Peggy Reynolds), and most notably interrupting reviewer Nicci Gerrard's private dinner party after Gerrard's less than favorable review of Art and Lies-- all this &1xbet online sports betting ;masculine&1xbet online sports betting ; behavior alternatively attracts and disgusts the press, neatly revealing the degree of privilege typically reserved for and ascribed to male artists and men of wealth. A great quantity of ink has been spilt over the way in which Winterson now lives her life--and interviewers like Jenny Turner and Nicci Gerrard, among many others, feel compelled to address the world within the walls of Winterson's London home in their feature articles. Winterson's story does have a compelling narrative. Having moved far from both her Lancashire childhood filled with Evangelical preaching and her poverty after leaving home a self-declared lesbian, Winterson now resides, according to newspaper reports, in &1xbet online sports betting ;a large house in north London, surrounded by a court of adoring women,&1xbet online sports betting ; &1xbet online sports betting ;waited-upon and unencumbered in her lovely house like an aristocrat&1xbet online sports betting ; (Gerrard 7)--a &1xbet online sports betting ;fantasy world [...] in a tall, grand, flat-fronted house from which she seldom stirs, among rich, dark surfaces, cats, and a coven of eager, loyal women who soundless cater to the writer's every hum-drum need&1xbet online sports betting ; (Turner T18). But, as reviewer Jenny Turner then self-reflexively comments, &1xbet online sports betting ;How do we know these things? Because we read them in the papers. So whose fantasy is this? Winterson's, ours, or a mixture of the two?&1xbet online sports betting ; (Turner T18).

Dispelling some of the &1xbet online sports betting ;fantasy,&1xbet online sports betting ; both Jenny Turner and Ginny Dougary note in their lengthy feature stories from 1994 and 1997 respectively that they did not find a &1xbet online sports betting ;coven&1xbet online sports betting ; of women hovering around Winterson, but only Winterson and her companion Peggy Reynolds; the &1xbet online sports betting ;coven&1xbet online sports betting ; consists of two assistants to help with typing and the accounts, and a cleaning woman, all &1xbet online sports betting ;paid handsomely&1xbet online sports betting ; (Dougary). The image of privilege persists, however, and Winterson has fostered it. Turner reminds her readers of an earlier interview in The Guardian which &1xbet online sports betting ;revealed Winterson ensconced like a queen bee, surrounded by willing drones in her swanky house [...] A nation gawped&1xbet online sports betting ; (T18, emphasis mine). Why did the nation &1xbet online sports betting ;gawp&1xbet online sports betting ;? I would suggest that Winterson's explicitly &1xbet online sports betting ;selfish&1xbet online sports betting ; claim upon other women's time reveals the degree of privilege typically reserved for and ascribed to male artists and men of wealth; further, her statement--issuing from a woman's mouth--shows up the otherwise taken-for-granted role of the long suffering wife, now played by Winterson's companion Peggy Reynolds. Although Peggy, a Ph.D., &1xbet online sports betting ;holds down three jobs of her own&1xbet online sports betting ;-- lecturer in Women's Studies, reviewer/editor, and presenter for Radio 3--Reynolds will &1xbet online sports betting ;redo her timetable to make sure she is on hand if ever, as today, there are strangers in the house&1xbet online sports betting ; (Turner T18). She appears willing to put Winterson first.

As a woman of wealth, Winterson therefore enjoys a degree of freedom, usually unavailable to the young woman writer, and, in her relationship with Peggy Reynolds, she is the dominant partner. Winterson herself has noted that &1xbet online sports betting ;it is helpful for a woman artist not to have a husband&1xbet online sports betting ; (Art Objects 105).(2) Winterson therefore lives a privileged life not only in terms of money and possessions, but in terms of time: she has chosen to place herself at the center of her household and not fulfill the roles generally expected of a woman and a woman artist. She has acquired the &1xbet online sports betting ;wife&1xbet online sports betting ; and staff Woolf identifies as necessary if a woman is to relinquish the care of the home. The result of her efforts challenges, as Woolf had suggested it would, the residual traces of the Angel in the House: Winterson is taken to task for the degree of power and privilege her income and her domestic partnership provide.

The origin of this &1xbet online sports betting ;fantasy,&1xbet online sports betting ; then, as Jenny Turner describes it, is indeed a mixture of Winterson's and of the public's desires. Winterson constructs her life in order to question the cultural assumption that the artist is to remain aloof from the material concerns of the production of art, and that gender and its attendant social roles do not hinder the production of art. Winterson manifests some of the very changes Woolf proposes in AROO. In response to Winterson's persona, the media creates a &1xbet online sports betting ;fantastical&1xbet online sports betting ; Other who represents the opposite of the ideal woman artist within bourgeois patriarchal society: Winterson becomes the anti-heroine and, as the press frequently terms her, the &1xbet online sports betting ;enfant terrible&1xbet online sports betting ; (Jensen 15) of the literary world.

Winterson's challenge to the cultural conventions for a British, woman artist is perhaps best exemplified by her now legendary response to Nicci Gerrard's profile in The Observer in June 1994. Gerrard's profile criticized Winterson for her arrogant &1xbet online sports betting ;isolation&1xbet online sports betting ; from the literary world as well as the quality of Winterson's last novel: the &1xbet online sports betting ;writing [...] is floating away,&1xbet online sports betting ; Gerrard claims: &1xbet online sports betting ;She cares about the word, not the world&1xbet online sports betting ; (7). Gerrard's reported comment that Winterson &1xbet online sports betting ;has lost touch&1xbet online sports betting ; becomes astoundingly ironic in light of what happened a few weeks later: Winterson and her partner Peggy Reynolds knocked on Nicci Gerrard's door at 10:30 in the evening, as Gerrard was entertaining guests for dinner, demanding explanation for the review.(3) Winterson wished to know why Gerrard had written about the life she leads, asking Gerrard, &1xbet online sports betting ;But, [...] I have always been kind to you, haven't I?&1xbet online sports betting ; and &1xbet online sports betting ;'Why didn't you talk to me directly? [...] [Y]ou know where I live, you could have knocked at my door.'&1xbet online sports betting ; After fifteen minutes of conversation, Winterson and Reynolds left, with Winterson saying, &1xbet online sports betting ;Never come near me or my writing again, do you hear?&1xbet online sports betting ;

Winterson's performance elicited any number of comments from Britain's literary establishment, most denouncing such improper behavior from an artist. An artist might certain think such thoughts, but should not put those thoughts into action. Most commentators agreed with Nicci Gerrard's rather horrified response: Winterson had over-stepped the bounds of propriety and decorum by asserting her presence in the world of the reviewer, a place she, as the artist reviewed, did not belong. Yet the response Winterson's bodily &1xbet online sports betting ;intervention&1xbet online sports betting ; (Longrigg 24) received reflects not only her challenge to the proper role of the artist, but particularly the woman artist, as Sebatian Faulks suggests: &1xbet online sports betting ;If Hemingway had turned up drunk to berate his critics it would have been considered a coup, a prank, old Papa's bravado. Wouldn't it? But there was something unpleasantly bullying about Winterson's behavior&1xbet online sports betting ; (9). Implying that the media's response to Winterson's knock on Gerrard's door is mediated by norms of gender, as well as sexuality, Faulks' assessment turns upon established perceptions of women in patriarchal society--that if Winterson had been a man, the response to her evening visit might have been more forgiving. But, instead of protesting through a more feminine behavior proscribed for her sex, Winterson appears all too much like a man. Here, the cultural stereotype of the passive heterosexual woman reveals the inverse stereotype of the aggressive butch lesbian--two gender stereotypes upon which a patriarchal, heterosexual society depends, and which the press predominately reinforces in their portrait of Winterson.

Winterson offers perhaps the most extreme example of a cultural experience felt by many women writers in Britain.(4) Living a purposefully &1xbet online sports betting ;public&1xbet online sports betting ; private life, Winterson desires to author herself for her public and revise the existing cultural narrative for the woman writer. Her literary and popular success certainly show Winterson &1xbet online sports betting ;put[ting] on the body&1xbet online sports betting ; of Shakespeare's sister as Woolf encouraged in 1929, but doing so in 1999 still comes at great personal cost. Only a handful of women reviewers like Michele Roberts and even fewer male reviewers recognize and value the challenge Winterson offers.(5) Her revisions to the cultural script illustrate the persistent difficulties of this task for the British woman writer, even at the turn of the twenty-first century, and the continued relevance of Woolf's cultural criticisms in AROO.

Notes

1. This figure is based on 1997 data available at the web site run by the Office for National Statistics on the &1xbet online sports betting ;Purchasing Power of the Pound&1xbet online sports betting ;: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/stats/ukinfigs/power.html.

2. A.S. Byatt might add children to the list. In an interview with Candia McWilliams about the relatively few women on the 1993 &1xbet online sports betting ;Best Young British Novelists&1xbet online sports betting ; list, the reviewer Joanna Coles notes, &1xbet online sports betting ;It took the only female judge, A S Byatt, to point out to the three male judges that a list with a cut-off age of forty did little to highlight the achievements of the woman writer.&1xbet online sports betting ; Or, as the author Candia McWilliams more bluntly put it, &1xbet online sports betting ;With the birth of each child, you lose two novels&1xbet online sports betting ; (&1xbet online sports betting ;Public Lives: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman&1xbet online sports betting ; 8).

3. Unlike most reports of the altercation, Gerrard's account of the incident (published as &1xbet online sports betting ;A Cold Blast of Winterson at the Door&1xbet online sports betting ;) maintains a distinction between Winterson's comments and the more inflammatory remarks of her partner.

4. See Nicci Gerrard, Into the Mainstream: How Feminism Has Changed Women's Writing (1989) and Michele Roberts, &1xbet online sports betting ;Girls Will Be Girls&1xbet online sports betting ; (1997).

5. Harvey Porlock notes how The Observer's assertion that &1xbet online sports betting ;'Winterson's new novel Gut Symmetries...has received a panning'...was only true if all female critics of the novel were ignored&1xbet online sports betting ;; &1xbet online sports betting ;among the blokes, there was a predictable reaction from a predictable crowd&1xbet online sports betting ; (&1xbet online sports betting ;Critical List&1xbet online sports betting ;).

Works Cited

Adair, Gilbert. &1xbet online sports betting ;Talkin' 'Bout My Generation.&1xbet online sports betting ; Sunday Times 6 June 1994.

Coles, Joanna. &1xbet online sports betting ;Public Lives: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Guardian 5 May 1993: 8.

Dougary, Ginny. &1xbet online sports betting ;Truth or Dare.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Times 4 Jan 1997.

Faulks, Sebatian. &1xbet online sports betting ;Don't Read the Reviews, Jeanette.&1xbet online sports betting ; Evening Standard 8 July 1994: 9.

Field, Michelle. &1xbet online sports betting ;Jeanette Winterson: 'I Fear Insincerity.'&1xbet online sports betting ; Publishers Weekly 20 March 1995: 38.

Gerrard, Nicci. &1xbet online sports betting ;Cold Blast of Winterson at the Door.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Observer 3 July 1994: 11.

---. Into the Mainstream: How Feminism Has Changed Women's Writing. London: Pandora, 1989.

---. &1xbet online sports betting ;The Prophet.&1xbet online sports betting ; New Statesman & Society 1 Sep. 1989: 12-13.

---. &1xbet online sports betting ;The Ultimate Self-Produced Woman.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Observer 5 June 1994: 7.

Jensen, Liz. &1xbet online sports betting ;Well-stuffed Turkey.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Independent 11 July 1998.

Lambert, Angela. &1xbet online sports betting ;Jeanette: Could anyone be as good as she thinks she is?&1xbet online sports betting ; The Independent 23 Jan 1998: 16.

Longrigg, Clare. &1xbet online sports betting ;Get Out of My Life--Get One of Your Own.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Guardian 8 July 1994: 24.

&1xbet online sports betting ;Mad, Bad, or Plain Brilliant?&1xbet online sports betting ; The Independent 11 June 1994: 10.

Messud, Claire. &1xbet online sports betting ;The Body Politic.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Guardian 26 Aug. 1992: 29.

Porlock, Harvey. &1xbet online sports betting ;Critical List.&1xbet online sports betting ; Sunday Times 12 Jan 1997.

---. &1xbet online sports betting ;No, No, Jeanette!&1xbet online sports betting ; Sunday Times 12 July 1998.

&1xbet online sports betting ;Racing the Classics: How the Leading Lists Shape Up.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Guardian 10 May 1996: T9.

Roberts, Michele. &1xbet online sports betting ;Book Review: 'Words Are Not the Only Art.'&1xbet online sports betting ; The Independent 19 June 1994: 32.

---. &1xbet online sports betting ;Girls Will Be Girls; Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Independent. 5 Jan 1997.

Turner, Jenny. &1xbet online sports betting ;Portrait: Preacher Woman.&1xbet online sports betting ; The Guardian 7 June 1994: T18.

Winterson, Jeanette. Art Objects: Essays in Ecstasy and Effrontery. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995.

---. The World and Other Places. London: Jonathan Cape, 1998.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1990.