Jeanette Winterson’s 2007 novel, The Stone Gods, also stands out as one of the texts that revolve around this pessimistic discussion concerning the cyclical and repetitive nature of the human condition and history. And it is a romance and emotions that are presented as the basis of humanity, even when it concerns love between a human and a robot.Ĭyclical nature of the human experience has been widely discussed through the cynical mind-set of the postmodern era.

The dystopian, nonlinear and often didactic tone of the novel is interwoven with poetic passages depicting romantic love that is, as is common in Winterson, solely homosexual.

Following the main gender-bending motif of Virginia Woolf’s cult novel Orlando, Billie chooses her partners according to their personality, not gender or biological sex. The narrative is not linear or chronological and consists of several stories set in various times and spaces which are interconnected not only by the common theme of human greed and irresponsible economic and anti-ecological behavior, but also by the central character Billie/Billy Crusoe. While Winterson’s novel is not innovative when it comes to the formal aspects of dystopias, she manages to create a sense of fluid and omnipresent history that is constantly blended into the present, bringing into focus men’s self-destructive tendencies. This postmodern narrative blends the world’s colonial past with its potentially colonial future, as mankind is attempting at colonizing a new planet. The paper analyzes the dystopian apocalyptic vision of human civilization in the novel The Stone Gods by a contemporary British writer Jeanette Winterson.

Don't Lose Your Head by Jeanette Powers