The Taste of Fairy Tale: Consumption as Theme and Textual Strategy in Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

This reading of Sexing the Cherry focuses on the motif of consumption in its function to represent the female struggle for pleasure, power, and verbal expression. The novel abounds in images of consumption, literal and metaphoric, from innocent scenes of sharing food to suggestive descriptions of literally eating sexual organs, chopping up bodies, hunting, etc. I argue that the motif of consumption in Winterson’s text stretches beyond the thematic and into the structural, becoming an integral principle of the narrative construction. The essay particularly discusses Winterson’s use of the fairy-tale genre, exploring the function of orality to deliver marginalized experiences.