Main Points

The PowerBook can be analyzed from 3 areas:

• Shape
  • The original edition of the text was a hardcover, square shaped book with various pictographic icons corresponding to the individual 'chapters'. Later editions were published in the more typical, rectangular shape associated with most paperbacks. The change in the book's design brings up questions about author's intent and whether or not the intent was slightly destroyed with the newer editions. Is a part of Winterson's vision lost? Does it really matter? 
  • The first edition of The.PowerBook also contained icons similar to those you would see on a Desktop before each chapter/section. In addition, the page numbers were on the sides and surrounded by lines, as though they were tabs. This also call to mind computer technology.
• Structure
  • The text is divided into small parts/'chapters' that correspond to different aspects of the novel
    • Sections in ALL CAPS
      • Titles for these sections are usually computer commands (i.e. OPEN HARD DRIVE) and they tend to contain the actual stories the author is writing to the reader (stories similar to parables).
    • Sections in all lowercase
      • Titles for these sections are generally misc. phrases (i.e. language costumier) and they contain the commentary of the "I" figure in the text, the person who is supposedly writing the stories in the ALL CAPS sections.
  • Point of View
    • First ("I")
      • SEARCH: Lancelot (male)
      • OPEN HARD DRIVE: Ali (female)
      • terrible thing to do to a flower: author (gender ambiguous)
    • Second ("you")
      • NEW DOCUMENT: (female)
      • OPEN HARD DRIVE: Tulip (gender ambiguous)
    • Third ("s/he")
      • OPEN HARD DRIVE: Across the break on page 20, all of a sudden there is a change in gender and perspective. First person female Ali becomes third person "he" Ali. This could be representative of the pirates outward perception of the 'real' (female) Ali.
• Language
  • In the chapter 'language costumier,' Winterson reinforces the notion that 'language' itself is the new costume. With the aid of simple words, people can communicate with complete anonymity in the modern world. We can adopt any sort of 'avatar' or identity we please (IM, message boards, chat rooms, you name it). Just like the "you" in The PowerBook, we can disappear on the Virtual Road, leaving our past as nothing but a memory.

Gender in The PowerBook: being an author within new forms of media such as the internet/electronic writing is often demarcated by the absence of a bodily presence. For example, one cannot truly know if the person they are IM'ing with is really who they say they are because the person is not actually seen. This can be said of many other types of medium (i.e. writing a letter also does not require actually seeing the person); however, it is the instantaneous transmission of information with newer forms of media that really highlights the lack of the real author's trace. In addition, the standarization of font further masks the author's identity; typically, one can tell if penmanship is "masculine" or "feminine." With the advent of fonts, there is a uniformity and complete gender neutrality (androgyny).

Winterson uses these notions within the text through the fluidity of the characters' gender. As we read The PowerBook, we cannot be certain of the sex of individual characters in the story. This achieves two things: 1.) the calling of attention to the erasure of biological forms (and their subsequent ramifications) within e-writing and 2.) the calling of attention to 21st century notions of fluid gender roles in which one is not confined by their sex to certain behaviors or thoughts. In general, most forms of media seek to reinforce societal gender roles (i.e. the use of attractive women in magazines targeted to women; typical gendered interactions in other forms of fiction). The PowerBook breaks those roles.

Love in The PowerBook: "The heart. Carbon-based primitive in a silicon world" (46). By emphasizing the fluidity of gender and identity, Winterson express that love no longer has to be restricted between two genders. The modern cyber world can aid in the formulation of relationships based on the person, not their biological makeup.

Passages

"I was happy with the lightness of being in a foreign city and the relief from identity it brings." (52)

"When I was born, my mother dressed me as a boy because she could not afford to feed any more daughters. By the mystic laws of gender and economics, it ruins a peasant to place half a bowl of figs in front of his daughter, while his son may gorge on the whole tree, burn it for firewood and piss on the stump, and still be reckoned a blessing to his father." (10)

“Why do you call it twenty first century fiction? There's been a lot of talk about the death of the book, but there is no death of the book, only a transformation of the book, both as artefact and as idea. In a new century we need new ways of looking at familiar things - that's the only way we make them ours, otherwise they're just borrowed and soon become clichés. I've used all kinds of devices to keep asking the big questions and to defamiliarise what's important but in danger of becoming stale. The shape of the book, its structure, its language, is a different way of working.” (http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=10)

Links

Jeanette Winterson: (shown in class). Jeanette Winterson's main webpage. Contains links to her serial novel 52 and her columns.

Interview: This is an interview with Jeanette Winterson. Here, Winterson talks about technology's role in PowerBook, and her work with children's books, which can be seen in this work. I found this to be an informative and interesting look at Jeanette Winterson.

Sexual Identity Online: entry from M/Cyclopedia of New Media exploring identity construction on the internet

Virtual Embodiment: entry from M/Cyclopedia of New Media about the role of the physical body online

Media, gender and identity:  Link to book extract that provides a synopsis about past and present gender identities

Love Myths from the Movies: Interesting because it is an example of how media can perpetuate ideas (fact or fiction) about love in reality through love in silver screen fabrication. Similar to how gender roles are also perpetuated through media forms like fiction. Winterson promotes subverting these love and gender 'norms'.