SEXING THE CHERRY

Plot : * 17th c England : alternative reality = historical facts + magical elements * The dog woman finds a little boy in the Thames (Jordan = river name travel connotation) * Alternance of narratives Dog woman / Jordan. Then Jordan leaves (mentally or physically we don’t know. He travels with John Tradescant = historically he was a traveler during the period = he gathered some “curiosities”) * Jordan is looking for a dancing girl (fortunata) but he does not know if she exists, he meets the 12 / 11? Princesses they tell him their stories after the end of the tale “the 12 dancing princesses” (Grimm) they all have left their husbands for different reasons. (in each case = because of feminism/ girl power) * Shift to 1990 (the book written in 89 so near future) 2 new characters = an “environmental activist + Nicholas Jordan” who dreams to travel.

examples of construction of time as patterns of emancipation
Christian vision of time * Idea of progress in time it implies linearity + concept of humanity as universal. There is a mirror effect (linked to the idea of microcosm-macrocosm).
Pattern of enlightenment

* The power of reason as the driving force of time, of humanity. Emancipation is possible through rational faculty and the possibility of constructing History (Descartes, Kant…).
Marxist reading of time

* Reading of exploitation within a tale of emancipation. Proletariat: birth of a new age. (tale of the end of times.) * Greek word for end: Telos. idea of time constructed from the end: teleological. Patriarchal: teleological vision from the end, it constructs our sense of time from what we project to achieve. * These patterns are all marked by the idea of ending as an achievement. * They are either teleological, either mythical: in that case, it is often a cyclic pattern of time, the idea of an origin and a reenactment of the origin, a constant re-birth. At the