FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES
ON
WEB FICTION
2004

Jeanette Winterson :: The.PowerBook
LambdaMOO

key texts

This week we will focus on Winterson's print novel The.PowerBook, a tale of love and identity online and offline. In order to help us think about the decisions Winterson has made about imagining and also writing online communication, we shall also look at the non-fictional(?) virtual community of LamdaMOO.

Reading around Winterson:

There is a great deal of material available about Jeanette Winterson's oevre. You can find reference to much of it on Winterson's official web site and on the reader's web site (both these sites open in new browsers).

Reading about MOOs:

There is an abundance of material about MOOs, but I suggest you start with:

Sue Thomas Hello World: Travels in virtuality (Raw Nerve, forthcoming). Section 3, pp23-25, offers a short manual for entering Lambda; section 4, pp25-37, is a reflective commentary on Mooing. This book is not yet published, but I will leave a proof copy of the relevant sections in the Common Room, or download a PDF of the first part of the book from the Yahoo York Gurls file store. (NB: still in draft form NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION) details of book

For a more distanced view, try: Caroline Bassett, 'Virtually Gendered: Life in an on-line world' in Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton The Subcultures Reader (London & New York: Routledge, 1997), 537-550.

Visiting LambdaMOO

• Use the instructions in Hello World, details above
• OR
  telnet directly to Lambda MOO at telnet://lambda.moo.mud.org:8888
• OR
  use this link

A good introductory tutorial is available at LinguaMOO.

Whether or not you visit Lambda before next week, you will gain a flavour from the reading.

Some questions to think about:

• Where do you imagine scenes in the novel as being set? Can you always be sure of the location?
• What do you think Winterson is saying about subjectivity and identity? Do you find her arguments convincing? Why? Why not?
• What kinds of connections does the book make between desire and identity? Between desire and online personas?
• What metaphors and phrases does Winterson use to explore the concept of 'freedom'? What kind of freedom does the book seem to extol?
• What do you make of the ways that Winterson changes her language from that of chat rooms or MOOS to a more conventional print form? What are the effects of the shifts?
• Is the narrative convincing as a love story? Why/ why not?
• What do you think of the idea of MOOing as 'fiction writing'?
• Does the gender-switching in virtual cities add anything to feminist understandings of gender? In answering this question, use a critical evaluation of your own experiences in LambdaMOO alongside theoretical material and Winterson's ideas offered in The Powerbook. If the idea of playing with gender interests you, you might like to read an earlier novel by Winterson, Written on the Body.