Epistemophily and Women’s Temporality in Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry

Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (1989) offers a feminist interpretation of history by using epistemophilic language and a circular time structure as alternatives to epistemological patriarchal language and linear temporality. Epistemophilic language is used in the novel to argue that history is cyclical, fluid, and continuous, and there are not strict divisions between private and public histories, or between the past, present, and future. Winterson evaluates the personal histories of characters within the public history to remove the hierarchy between the private, which is associated with the feminine, and the public, which is associated with the masculine. Moreover, she depicts history as a subjective notion as each character reinterprets and re-evaluates history from their own perspectives. Characters that deviate from the dominant epistemologies emphasise the subjectivity of history by looking at history from a subjective, feminine perspective. In the light of the discussions on epistemophily and women’s temporality, mainly referring to the arguments of Julia Kristeva, this study aims to demonstrate that Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry challenges patriarchal epistemological language that favours singularity and linear temporality based on separation and divisions by describing history as a subjective recreation of the past which flows into the present and future.