Explore the Significance of Metafiction in Jeanette Winterson’s Story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses

Throughout Wintersons rendition of the twelve dancing princesses adapted from the renowned story by the Grimm Brothers the plot canal is explicitly centred around an array of fictive images. implicitly though, the metafiction and accretion used chiffonier be unveiled as symbolism that correlates with a larger meaning the images associated with men are uncomfortable and even execration in comparison to the comforting images (including the mermaid) that represent womanhood. Therefore, in the two specific examples of the mermaid and the poison, the reader may accept fiction as an underlying detail that leads to a deeper truth or argument.In the exact example of the mermaid the reader learns that the senior princess has fallen in love with her (the mermaid) and that they die hard in the well together. The scene is evidently fictional mermaids dont exist, and if they did, then Jordon and the princess wouldnt be able to stand in the well and converse with the mermaid due to biological impossibilities. Therefore the statement is now false, yet the reader may retrieve themselves accepting it as truth in order to move on to the grittiness of the plotline, and discover the significance of the mermaid her repair can be interpreted in various ways.Firstly, the mermaid could be seen as the product of rebellion against the conventional ritual of marriage to a husband. Rebellion seems a probable suggestion after studying the original story, which Wintersons tosh is arguably a continuation of. The doors that were shut and locked up each night exemplify the mystifys masculine domination over the freedom of his daughters. Likewise, in the tale the Kings offspring would rather see the soldiers killed than have their freedom bound that they laughed heartily at the sleeping soldier exhibits this.That the princess had to plunge in deep waters in Wintersons tale exemplifies how she was willing to face the unknown (traditionally in literature the ocean is feared e. g. In th e Tempest Ferdinand cries hell is empty and all of the devils are here before plummeting into the ocean) in order to search for entertainment off from her husband. Secondly, the mermaid could represent the princesses craving for womanhood this links on from the rebellion against masculine dominance.The deep waters as a meeting place, followed by the fact that the couple live in the well envisaging a womb like place due to its round and wet characteristics may bring to some readers minds an obvious yearning for womanly presence and dominance within the princess. It is noticeable that the existence of a mother is lacking in both renditions of the myth and so arguably the princess may be trying to reconnect with the womb of the Motherly figure that appears nonexistent in childhood. Acceptance of nonsense can be further seen on page 55 in a passage where content may be viewed as allegorical.There is also arguably a sense of intertextuality as it bares grammatical construction to t he synoptic bible passage of the demon possessed man (Mathew 828-34), which should consequently ring out clear symbolic meaning to the reader. The melodramatic line Out of his (the husband) belly came a group of cattle and a fleet of pigs can be defined by the reader as an impossible scenario. whence the reader will seek the implicit meaning which holds a deeper content. In the Bible passage, the rearing of swine off the cliff enabled the demon possessed man to flip freed from his past torments.Therefore, the suggestion could be that the husband is better off dead, released from sin, than living alive as an overeater with evil within him gluttony being a biblical crime. This argument is supported when the door salesman says to the princess you are right to kill him. The princesss hate for her husbands obesity reflects the squeeze status of their marriage nowhere in the passage does any form of love or appreciation ring clear, only a sense of endurance we had been married a a couple of(prenominal) years for example suggests that the princess thinks that this is a fair enough trail run before murdering him .He is presented as unlikeable through firstly the unpleasant verbs that the princess attaches to his actions gulped, crashing, swelled, complained and second through the portrayal of him as the demon. Arguably, the princess finds control and order after the fictional explosion that kills her husband, as Winterson writes in the first person, I rounded them (the herd) up stressing the herds obedience to her contrasting to their disorderly actions to the husband who had always complained about his digestion while the herds had been inside of him.Following on from this, it is arguable that with the ending of her (the princesss) marriage came her ability to live according to her tastes. Her unbowed satisfaction is exemplified in the final sentence I prefer farming to cooking, which, again allegorically, is arguably stating that she prefers her single bearing where she farms the cattle- , to her married life where she cooks the cattle. Therefore, again in this passage, the reader may accept that the content is fanciful to the real world, but for the passage it is necessary as the images created have significant impact on the symbolic meaning that Winterson is creating.Is Winterson a feminist? This could certainly be argued given the evidence found in the passages. A strong conclusion to her sketch is that woman have more of a chance of living happily ever after by living according to their own tastes than through forced marriage the latter being the favourable traditionally in fairytales. This is mainly because Wintersons argument represents a changing view of a womans place in a more modern society than that of Grimms.Although she retains the same time period as the original tale, the conclusion that woman can find freedom through outwitting their husbands is much different from literature that would have been produced in early decades (albeit freedom is temporarily found by the daughters in Grimms tale when they outwit their father, and the soldiers night after night). Therefore a reader may acknowledge the falsehood in Wintersons passages, and yet acknowledge it as true in search for the deeper truth underneath.