The vignettes presented under the heading “Hallucinations and Diseases of the Mind” destabilize conventional reality by treating temporal and personal boundaries as fluid. In one scene, a bullied modern schoolgirl walking near Waterloo Bridge finds herself transformed into the Dog-Woman, already home in the 17th century; in another, a sailor on the Thames converses with the long-dead John Tradescant. These moments are portrayed as authentic experiences, illustrating the novel’s argument of Time as a Simultaneous Reality. The narrative structure collapses linear chronology, presenting the past as an accessible dimension that coexists with the present without contradicting recorded history. This concept is explicitly outlined in the subsequent list of “Lies,” which dismisses propositions like “Time is a straight line” (79) and “Reality as something which can be agreed upon” (79). The novel’s fantasy elements thus become a philosophical tool, using these surreal encounters to argue that human consciousness is not bound by a single timeline. As Chapter 11 theorizes, certain people can be “superconductors for time,” able to “step out of one present into another” (88), moving along the circular “coil of pure time.” (87) The section’s opening meditation on maps and globes provides the central metaphor for this concept: Linear, daily experience is the flat map, while the truer, multidimensional nature of existence is the globe, where all journeys exist simultaneously.

While Jordan theorizes about reality, the Dog-Woman reshapes it through visceral force. After a Royalist preacher offers a convoluted justification for violence, she immediately puts it into practice, attacking Puritans and later dumping a sack containing “119 eyeballs […] and over 2,000 teeth” (82) before her horrified co-conspirators. Her actions embody a form of Physical Power as a Tool of Defiance. In this case, the Dog-Woman fights against the rigid, hypocritical authority of the Puritan regime and the ineffectual rhetoric of her male allies. Her violence is political; she rejects the abstract theological debates of the men at the meeting in favor of bodily retribution that exposes their squeamishness. This defiance is further dramatized in her execution of Preacher Scroggs and Neighbour Firebrace, where she stages a theatrical revenge that mocks their authority and exposes their hypocrisy. The Dog-Woman’s immense physical presence and unapologetic brutality function as an assault on a social system that seeks to control and diminish women. Her actions in the Spitalfields brothel, a space where male desire and power are supposedly sovereign, invert that dynamic, transforming it into a stage for her own righteous judgment.

Jordan’s discovery of Fortunata on a remote island introduces an engagement with the power of revisionist mythology. When Fortunata recounts her escape from a forced marriage, her version of the “12 Dancing Princesses” fairytale directly contradicts the one Jordan previously heard from her sisters. Where their story depicted a fantastical flight on a wire, hers describes a simple refusal followed by a life of self-sufficient artistry as a world-traveling dancer. This conflict between narratives demonstrates the theme of Reclaiming Agency Through Storytelling. The original fairytale, a cautionary tale about female disobedience, is fractured into multiple, subjective truths, each empowering its teller. This is reinforced by the motif of weight and lightness; Fortunata and her sisters are so light they are pulled into a floating city, a physical manifestation of their escape from earthly constraints. This imaginative freedom contrasts with the Dog-Woman’s earthy, weighty power, suggesting different modes of female autonomy. Fortunata’s version transforms her from a passive object of a prince’s discovery into an active agent of her own liberation. Winterson uses this metafictional technique, a key element of historiographic metafiction, to critique how patriarchal narratives have traditionally constrained female identity, suggesting that freedom begins with the seizing of one’s own story.

This section solidifies Jordan’s internal conflict between his desire to be a conventional hero and his imaginative nature. He feels lost, overshadowed by his powerful mother and unequal to the heroic ideal of his mentor, whose journeys “can be tracked on any map” (102). Jordan’s struggle reflects the tension between the “ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets” (103). The motif of journeys and maps culminates in his realization that his most important voyages are unchartable and therefore cannot be shown to others. This inner quest is rooted in a childhood memory of seeing a banana, an encounter with the exotic that established the symbol of the banana and the pineapple as an emblem of boundless new realities. Fortunata shows a model for this internal self-sufficiency, having learned to “dance alone, for its own sake and for hers” (100). His decision to leave her, though painful, is an important step in his development. By accepting that he cannot possess her or her world, he learns to navigate by his own internal compass, using her memory as a “marker” for a journey that no map can chart.

The narrative structure of these chapters deliberately mirrors their thematic content, illustrating the constructed nature of reality and history. The collage-like format of Chapter 9, which shifts from philosophical reflection on maps to titled vignettes (“Objects,” “Time”) and a declarative list of “Lies,” is a distinctly postmodern technique. It breaks the immersive flow of traditional storytelling to present reality as a series of fragmented, subjective experiences rather than a cohesive, linear plot. This strategy forces the reader to become an active participant in making meaning, deciding which “Lies” to believe and how to connect the disparate parts. The inclusion of Fortunata’s story, a fairytale revision embedded within Jordan’s narrative, further highlights this self-conscious layering. The novel is commenting on the act of storytelling itself. By concluding that Fortunata’s story and her sisters’ contradictory version are both “true, although it is not” (94), the text rejects the notion of a single, authoritative truth, embracing a world where multiple realities can coexist.