Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (1989) is a work of historiographic metafiction that blends fantasy elements with the historical backdrop of 17th-century England. The novel is primarily told through the alternating perspectives of the Dog-Woman, a powerful giantess, and her adopted son, Jordan. Rescued from the Thames as an infant, Jordan grows up to become an explorer, embarking on both literal sea voyages and fantastical journeys of the mind in search of an elusive dancer and his own complex identity. The novel uses its unconventional structure to argue Time As a Simultaneous Reality, where past, present, and future coexist. Through its formidable narrator, the book explores Physical Power as a Tool of Defiance, while its revisionist fairy tales demonstrate the theme of Reclaiming Agency Through Storytelling.

As a work of postmodern literature, Sexing the Cherry reflects author Jeanette Winterson’s career-long engagement with themes of identity, love, and the nature of truth, often informed by her own adoption and strict Pentecostal upbringing. Winterson, whose acclaimed debut novel was Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), won the E. M. Forster Award for Sexing the Cherry. The novel sets its fantastical narrative against the turbulent English Civil War, grounding its surrealism in a period of historical upheaval. This historical layer is complicated by a narrative strand set in 1990, reflecting the rise of ecological activism in the late 20th century. By collapsing these timelines and realities, Winterson challenges readers to question the boundaries between history and myth, fact and fiction, and the self and its many possible lives.

This guide refers to the Grove Press eBook edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, sexual violence, sexual content, animal death and abuse, illness and death, and cursing.

Plot Summary

In a surreal version of 17th-century London, the narrative alternates between two primary narrators: The Dog-Woman, a giantess of immense strength and fierce maternal love, and her adopted son, Jordan. The Dog-Woman, isolated by her size and strength, recounts finding Jordan as an infant, abandoned in a sack in the filthy River Thames. She raises him in her hut alongside her 50 fighting dogs. Jordan’s own narration begins with his first memory of a foggy night, and his imaginative life is sparked at age three when the Dog-Woman takes him to see the first banana in England. He has a vision of a tropical shore, which his mother identifies as the first time he “set sail.” A neighboring witch prophesies that Jordan will make his mother love him and then break her heart.

As Jordan grows, he lives a dual existence, one in the grim reality of London and another in fantastical worlds he visits in his mind. He travels to a city where spoken words form clouds that must be scrubbed clean by people in hot-air balloons. In another city, the inhabitants live on furniture suspended over a pit of crocodiles to avoid touching the floor; it is here that Jordan first sees a beautiful, elusive dancer who becomes the object of a lifelong quest. This quest solidifies when he discovers the home of the 12 Dancing Princesses, all of whom have escaped their miserable marriages to princes. They tell him their stories, including that of their youngest sister, Fortunata, the most gifted dancer, who fled her wedding on a tightrope and was never seen again. Meanwhile, the Dog-Woman navigates her own lonely existence. She recalls her one attempt at love, which ended when the man fainted in terror of her. Her world changes when a young Jordan befriends John Tradescant, the King’s gardener, who fills the boy’s head with tales of exploration, heroism, and exotic plants.

The political turmoil of the English Civil War begins to encroach on their lives. The Dog-Woman, a staunch Royalist, moves with Jordan to Wimbledon when he is hired by Tradescant, and she frequently clashes with her Puritan neighbors, the venomous Preacher Scroggs and the sycophantic Neighbour Firebrace. The conflict reaches its peak with the trial and execution of King Charles I in 1649. The Dog-Woman, Jordan, and Tradescant witness the event in disguise, and it shatters their world. In the aftermath, Tradescant resolves to leave England, and Jordan, now 19 years old and filled with a desire to explore, decides to go with him. The Dog-Woman is left alone and heartbroken, fulfilling her neighbor’s prophecy.

Following Jordan’s departure, the Dog-Woman unleashes her grief and fury upon the Puritans. She joins a vigilante group of Royalists dedicated to maiming their enemies, though the Dog-Woman formerly killed her targets. Her campaign leads her to a brothel, where the sex workers have been murdering their Puritan clients. She agrees to help them dispose of the bodies and, upon discovering Scroggs and Firebrace among the clientele, exacts revenge by dismembering and killing them both. Jordan sails the world, continuing his inward and outward journeys. He eventually discovers a remote island where Fortunata runs a dancing school, teaching her students to transcend their physical bodies and become points of light. She tells Jordan she has learned to dance for herself, not for a lover. He realizes his quest was not truly for her, but for a version of himself. He leaves her and continues his voyages, eventually returning to England as a hero, bringing with him the first pineapple to reach the country.

Jordan’s triumphant return is short-lived. London is soon consumed by the Great Plague in the 1660s. The Dog-Woman helps collect corpses in the devastated city for the massive pits in which bodies are burned. Her immense strength making her immune to the sickness, but Jordan falls gravely ill, calling out for Fortunata in his delirium. The Dog-Woman forces the witch to provide a cure, which revives him, but he remains distant and spiritually adrift. The Dog-Woman perpetually smells the burning puts, and her sense of coming doom is realized when the Great Fire of London breaks out in 1666. Seeing the fire as a necessary, violent cleansing, she and Jordan prepare to flee the burning city forever on his ship.

The narrative framework expands to include two 20th-century characters: Nicolas Jordan, a modern naval cadet who is fascinated by the sea and tales of heroic explorers, and an unnamed female chemist campaigning against mercury pollution. The chemist imagines she is inhabited by a powerful alter ego: a giant, raging woman who fights for ecological justice. The past and present bleed into one another. The chemist recalls a childhood memory of standing on Waterloo Bridge and seeing 17th-century London laid out before her, while Nicolas meets Tradescant in two brief interactions. Nicolas, reading a newspaper story about the chemist’s lonely protest, feels an inexplicable connection to her and finds her at her river encampment. Together, they plan to burn down the factory responsible for the contamination, an act that mirrors the historical Great Fire.

The timelines converge in the novel’s final moments. As the 17th-century Jordan prepares to sail from the burning London, he tells his mother he encountered his own doppelgänger in the fog and wonders if he is now “complete.” Aboard the ship, the Dog-Woman has a vision of Fortunata standing beside Jordan. The story concludes with Jordan’s reflection that time is a construct of the mind and that all of reality, from the past to the future, is ultimately just empty space and points of light. The various journeys and selves, both historical and modern, are simultaneous, coexisting possibilities in an infinite and mysterious universe.