Summary
Jordan continues to muse on the nature of time, memory, and existence. He wonders how anyone can be certain what has happened in their lives, or of the sequence in which events took place. He describes a scene in which, as he explores an island, he finds a hole filled with worn-out ballet shoes. He follows a path from the hole to a house, and climbs in through the window. He is able to peer into a room where he watches a woman dancing. The woman catches him watching her, and it turns out to be the woman he has been pursuing for years. Jordan interrupts the narrative to tell the reader that the scene he is describing may be either a memory or a fantasy, something that has happened in the past or in the future.
Jordan resumes his account of meeting the dancer, who introduces herself as Fortunata (the youngest of the twelve dancing princesses). Fortunata tells Jordan about how she grew to dread her impending marriage; on the wedding day, after watching her sisters marry the other eleven princes, she fled. In Fortunata's version of the story, she simply walked out of the church (whereas in the story told by her sisters, she took flight). She explains that she traveled around the world, working as a dancer, and then finally settled down and opened her dancing school.
Fortunata explains what happened before she and her sisters were caught sneaking out to go dancing. They visited a city that had once been normal, but began to experience roiling and shifting ground. To cope with this upheaval, the people in this town began to pass above the ground on suspended wires and ropes; this practice led them to dancing. The people in the city also discovered that gravity no longer affected them, and they could float and fly. The entire city eventually begins to float above land, and when it passes over the town where Fortunata and her sisters live, they are attracted to it. Every night, they sneak out to the floating city and dance there. The princesses enjoy the floating city so much that they plan to live there permanently (the city is soon going to pass to a new location), but on the night before their final escape, the prince follows the princesses by clinging to their skirts. After he reveals their secret to the king, the princesses are chained up, and forced to await their impending marriage.
Jordan and Fortunata spend one happy month together, but he eventually needs to leave. She is unwilling to leave her island. He wants to be a hero and embody ideals of masculinity; he believes that his unconventional upbringing and strange mother have made him less active and assertive than he wants to be. When it is time to sail away, Jordan bids goodbye to Fortunata and promises to return to her someday. Jordan leaves Fortunata behind, knowing that he will never see her again, and will pine for her for the rest of his life.
The narrative shifts to Dog Woman; it is 1661, and Jordan has returned to England, after voyaging to Barbados and many other locations. He was at sea for 13 years, from the time he was 19 to the time he was 33. He brings back the first pineapple that has ever been seen in England. By this time, the monarchy has been restored in England; Dog Woman recounts how the bodies of prominent Puritan leaders were exhumed and hung as traitors. Tradescant has passed away, and Dog Woman thinks of him fondly. Dog Woman lives in her small house in London, and the elderly woman continues to live next door to her.
Dog Woman also describes how she has continued to explore her sexuality. She attempted to have sex with a man, but during intercourse, she accidentally sucked him into her vagina, and he had to be pried out. He offered to perform oral sex on her, but was put off by the size of her genitals. Dog Woman thinks back to how, after it became clear that she was going to grow to an abnormal size, her father tried to sell her to be exhibited as a circus freak. Dog Woman fought back and killed her father.
Dog Woman describes awaiting the arrival of Jordan's ship. She dressed up and went to the seashore; when Jordan reached land, he gave her a rope of pearls. That night, as she watches Jordan sleep, Dog Woman notices that he now wears a pendant engraved with a picture of dancing shoes, in place of the medallion she had given him.
Analysis
Jordan is seemingly successful in his quest to find Fortunata, resolving one of the novel's major conflicts. However, Winterson incorporates elements of post-modernism and magical realism into her novel by hinting that the meeting between Jordan and Fortunata may be imagined, or projected as a future fantasy. By unsettling the reader's ability to know if this event is "really" taking place, Winterson subverts traditional love stories where a reunion between lovers would be a common trope; she also plays with the notion of unfulfilled desire. Readers are likely to be drawn into the plot surrounding Jordan's quest to find Fortunata, and their desire to see the lovers reunite becomes an analogue for Jordan's own desire. Winterson makes her fictional world more similar to reality by withholding any promises of resolution or closure.
Interestingly, Fortunata and Jordan do spend some time together, but very few details about their interactions are provided. Jordan focuses on the stories that Fortunata tells him: first, the detailed and expanded story of her experience as one of the twelve dancing princesses. Jordan has heard some of these details before, but Fortunata's narration of her own story implies the intimacy that can only be achieved when the two of them encounter one another directly. Later, when she declines to leave the island to travel with him, Fortunata tells Jordan another story, which he will subsequently repeat to Dog Woman: the story of Artemis and Orion. This story's themes of violence, betrayal, and rape hint at why Fortunata perhaps believes that a successful and equitable heterosexual relationship is impossible, and declines to pursue one.
The inconclusive resolution in which Jordan finds Fortunata, but then leaves her, subverts a traditional and triumphant tale of a hero achieving his goal; as Marilyn Farwell writes, "Jordan's desire for heroism includes the novel-long search for his ideal beloved, Fortunata. It is a search that goes for naught because when he finds her, she refuses to go with him. In effect, she refuses to be the closure of his story" (179-180). If Jordan had brought Fortunata back to England with him, she would function like the pineapple or the banana: an exotic trophy to be displayed as the literal fruit of heroic masculine labor. Fortunata's rejection of Jordan's offer also suggests that he has been misguided in thinking what would meet with her approval and love: she is unmoved by the sort of victorious heroism he has believed to be necessary to be considered a successful man.
Finally, the separation from Fortunata realigns Jordan and Dog Woman. Dog Woman has been excluded from sexuality and romantic love; not coincidentally, while Jordan is failing to forge a relationship with Fortunata, Dog Woman unsuccessfully attempts a sexual relationship. Her male partner gamely attempts to satisfy her, but is inadequate to the task, and eventually overwhelmed, revealing a limited and circumscribed understanding of sexuality. Dog Woman's nonplussed self-assurance is affirmed by her solidly blaming her male partner for a lack of courage and ingenuity, rather than engaging in any critique or self-doubt about her own body. Dog Woman is aware that she is large and ugly, but she is unbothered by this reality; this self-assurance wryly hints at the gendered expectation for heterosexual women to feel obligated to provide pleasure to male partners.
Jordan and Dog Woman reunite after a long separation, highlighting their close emotional bond. Significantly, Jordan is 33 when he returns; this age is often symbolically weighted, since in Christian tradition Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. He has transitioned from childhood to maturity, which is symbolized by his removal of the medallion he has worn since childhood, and the wearing of Fortunata's necklace in its place. The pearls he gives to Dog Woman symbolize his role as a triumphant explorer, since pearls (much like tropical fruit) were typically a luxury good imported from abroad; they also symbolize Dog Woman's unexpected conformity with some traditionally feminine roles. Even though her character typically unsettles gendered norms, she shows a deep maternal affection for gender, and engages in traditional acts such as nurturing him and wearing jewelry only in the context of their relationship.
