Character Analysis

Jeanette: Narrator and Protagonist

Jeanette is both the novel's narrator and protagonist — a dual role that creates the ironic tone Winterson is known for. As a child, Jeanette accepts her world uncritically: the church is good, the mother is all-powerful. As the adult narrator looking back, Winterson allows the reader to see what the child cannot — the extremity of the control, the absurdity of the binary worldview, the cruelty of the exorcism. This gap between child's acceptance and reader's understanding creates continuous dramatic irony.

Jeanette's most striking quality is resilience. She survives the exorcism, the loss of Melanie, the expulsion from the church, and the rejection by her mother — without becoming bitter. She misses God: "I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal." She returns to visit her mother at Christmas. Winterson presents Jeanette not as a victim but as someone who builds a new identity from the ruins of the old one. Her wit — inherited from Winterson's own voice — is her primary survival tool.

The Mother: Domination and Contradiction

The mother is the novel's most complex character — simultaneously loving and suffocating, devout and hypocritical, powerful and fragile. She is never named, which universalises her as an archetype of parental control. She adopted Jeanette to build a missionary: the plan, dreamed before the child existed, was to "get a child, train it, build it, dedicate it to the Lord." Jeanette says she was brought in to join her mother "in a tag match against the Rest of the World." She controls Jeanette's education, friendships, diet, and beliefs. Her world is divided into "friends and enemies" with no middle ground.

Yet Winterson does not reduce the mother to a villain. She is funny, charismatic, and formidable. Her energy fills every room. She is the most alive character in the novel — her passion, even when misdirected, is genuine. She is a woman whose own life has been limited by class and gender, and who has found in the church the only arena where her talents are valued. The mother's contradictions make her fascinating rather than simply hateful.

Pastor Finch and the Church Leadership

Pastor Finch is a visiting preacher from Stockport who tours in a van painted with the damned on one side and the heavenly host on the other. He is the church's demon expert, and his sermon that even "this innocent child" could be "a house of demons" gives the congregation the language it later uses about Jeanette. The exorcism itself is ordered by the unnamed local pastor, who denounces Jeanette from the pulpit. Winterson presents that pastor not as individually cruel but as a figure embodying institutional power's inability to accommodate difference. His authority depends on the congregation's obedience, so any visible deviation must be crushed publicly.

Miss Jewsbury: The Secret Hypocrite

Miss Jewsbury is a congregation member who, it is hinted, is herself a closeted lesbian. She takes Jeanette home on the night the church denounces her — before the exorcism, not after — and they sleep together, which Jeanette hates. She is also the one person who earlier realised the silent child was deaf rather than holy. Winterson uses Miss Jewsbury to show that Jeanette is not unique — others share her identity but have chosen concealment. Miss Jewsbury's secrecy reveals the hypocrisy at the congregation's heart: it condemns openly what it tolerates secretly.

Melanie and Katy: Love as Catalyst

Melanie is Jeanette's first love — tender, innocent, and joyful until the church intervenes. Melanie's response to condemnation contrasts with Jeanette's: she submits completely, repents, and marries a man. She functions as a foil — her conformity highlights Jeanette's refusal to deny herself. Katy is Jeanette's second love, whose discovery triggers the final break. Neither Melanie nor Katy is developed as fully as Jeanette or the mother — they are catalysts for the novel's central conflicts rather than complex characters in their own right.