It can be said that the book is an autobiographical journey through Winterson's upbringing in the north of England. Jeanette is adopted as her mother wanted to have a child without intercourse whom she could mould into a servant of God. She is brought up under the strictest of rules and is ferociously mollycoddled by her mother and pressured to behave to the highest expectations of her evangelical church congregation.
Jess begins to realise that she sometimes disagrees with the beliefs and teaching her congregation has pressed upon her. In particular, she disagrees with a sermon about the nature of perfection. A gap begins to form between Jess and the rest of her congregation. As she grows older, she is thinking more and more about romance.
I have chosen 3 points in the narrative to convey through my
final shoots. I chose the three moments specifically for their poignancy in the
narrative and the themes and motifs behind them. I will use the styling,
makeup, hair and composition of the shot to eventually tell a story and convey
the emotional, physical and psychological journey of my chosen character.
The first moment I
have chosen occurs when Jess is a child.
At the age of seven, Jess falls ill and becomes deaf
and dumb. Her mother and the rest of the congregation see it as a 'sign' from
God and that she is in a state of rapture. Thankfully another member of the
congregation, Miss. Jewsbury, realizes that Jess is in fact ill and needs to be
taken to hospital.
I have chosen this part of the narrative as it depicts
the ferocity of religion. The church that Jess is a part of is so
enthusiastically religious that they choose not to recognize that Jess is in
fact in dire need of medical attention.
I felt that this also represented the relationship
that Jess has with her adopted mother, as we see that she idolizes Jess for
being in a ‘state of rapture’ and parades her as a religious trophy for the
congregation to see. This relates back to the fact that Jess’s mother adopted
her and treats her as her project to develop into a highly religious
missionary.
The intervention of Miss. Jewsbury can be seen to
foreshadow Jess’s realization of her sexuality later on in the narrative, as
she will eventually have sexual relations with Miss. Jewsbury, the person who
has taken care of her and put an end to her suffering, thus setting her free.
When brainstorming this idea, I visualized a shot
where a young Jess is sat on a chair in the middle of the shot, with hands
surrounding her, touching her face and holding open bibles and rosary beads to
symbolize the heavy influence religion has in shaping Jess into the person she
becomes.
The second moment I
have chosen comes later in the narrative.
I have chosen to depict is the moment when Jess has
had her first love affair with Melanie, a girl who works on the fish counter in
the local town. She first spots Melanie when she is out with her mother and
cannot take her eyes off her. It is here that the reader first realizes that Jess
may not be heterosexual. Jess eventually confesses to her mother how she is in
love with Melanie. Her mother is disgusted and rushes her to church where the
Pastor makes a spectacle of the two girls and Melanie intantly repents.
When Jess refuses to repent, it becomes apparent that
the congregation believe that Jess’s lesbian tendancies are present because she
has the devil inside her. At her house, a select few members of the
congregation, led by the Pastor and Jess’s mother attempt to exorcise the demons
from her spirit by physically restraining her for fourteen hours. When she will
not repent, they lock her in a cupboard for 36 hours without food or water.
Jess cannot understand what is wrong about her loving Melanie but eventually
pretends to repent to keep the peace with her mother and the congregation.
I chose this moment in the narrative because of the
suffering that Jess has to endure, purely for her lifestyle choice. I felt that
this was a significant point in the narrative, which leads on from my first
choice as it shows what religious emotional and physical turmoil Jess is put
under when she realizes that she is Homosexual.
When initially visualizing this shoot, I saw Jess
alone in a small, dark, distressed environment that mirrors the emotional
torment she is experiencing. I want to depict her looking worn down, and
confused and convey the journey that she has experienced emotionally and
physically up until this point in the narrative.
The third point in
the narrative I have chosen to use is toward the end of the novel.
After repenting, Jess becomes deeply involved in the
church again. She begins to fulfill her mother’s dreams of becoming a
missionary by teaching a Sunday school. It is here that she meets Katy, a
convert who goes on to become her second lover. They are eventually caught and
the church strips her from all her duties, her mother disowns her and the
congregation shuns her. Eventually, she moves away from the small town to the
city and only returns once at the very end of the novel.
I chose this particular part of the narrative, as this
is when Jess finds herself and her independence. Being shunned from the church
sets her free and gives her the independence she has always craved. This shows
the end of her journey as she is free to be the person she has always been
reprimanded for wanting to be.
When thinking about how to represent this idea, I saw
a shot of Jess walking away from the camera, down a cobbled street holding what
would appear to be Katy’s hand. Katy is out of shot. Jess is looking over her
shoulder and for the first time, the viewer can see a small smile over Jess’s
face for the first time and it shows her journey of maturity and how the
experiences she has gone through have molded her into the person she is at the
end of the novel.
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