ABSTRACT
In her essay "Imagination and Reality", Jeanette Winterson insists on the capacity of the imagination – and of art, as a direct product of the latter – to allow us to apprehend a reality beyond the sensorial world. As Winterson remarks, the imagination provides us with clues about our identities, desires and existential cravings. This chapter aims to examine the role of the imagination in some of Jeanette Winterson's short stories from her volume The World and Other Places inasmuch as they devise critical strategies to demystify traditional standards pertaining to female roles and women's sexuality. In Art Objects, Winterson holds the idea that artistic creation is a way to confront the reality hidden underneath layers of our own taboos and self-restrictions. Winterson's use of pictorial imagery works towards the debunking of homophobic prejudice and the validation of the feminine body. Picasso's masterpiece, his 1937 Guernica, also finds its place in Winterson's story.
