The Fiction of Abundance and Awareness: Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping

Abstract

In an interview after the publication of Lighthousekeeping, Jeanette Winterson discusses the underlying principle of her eighth novel: “I love the idea of a dynamic universe where nothing is static and everything is changing at every moment. … I really believe in the power of art to show us this, to hold up a real mirror to reality and say, This is how it is: much wilder, much stranger, much more chaotic and exciting than you could ever dream” (Francone 2005). She emphasizes the capacity and perhaps responsibility of art to convey the intrinsic richness of reality. She points out that art’s excess resembles the excess of nature as she describes it in the novel: “Nature measures nothing. Nobody needs this much sunlight. Nobody needs droughts, volcanoes, monsoons, tornadoes either, but we get them, because our world is as extravagant as the world can be. We are the ones obsessed by measurement. The world just pours it out” (Winterson 2004: 196–7).