Summary
The narrative resumes in modern-day England. A teenage boy named Nicholas Jordan lives with his parents, and spends his free time making model boats. One day, Nicholas sees a painting that depicts a man handing King Charles II the first pineapple ever brought to England. Nicholas becomes very interested in the painting and begins keeping a pineapple in his bedroom, until the smell of the rotting fruit leads his mother to throw it out. Nicholas also decides that he wants to join the navy. Nicholas has been fascinated by boats ever since he purchased a book called The Observer's Book of Ships. He began making detailed models, and on the weekends, he sails his boats with his friend Jack.
Nicholas also loves a book called The Boys' Book of Heroes. It features short biographies of important historical figures; Nicholas is particularly intrigued by heroes who traveled by sea and explored (or sometimes conquered) different places. Nicholas fantasizes about growing up into a handsome and brave man who will be respected and admired. Nicholas hopes that a career in the navy will help him achieve these goals. As he grows older, Jack finds it silly to spend time sailing model boats. Several times, both before and after he joins the navy, Nicholas encounters a strange man who seems to be dressed in clothes from an earlier historical era, and who mentions events that took place a long time ago. The section of the narrative ends with Nicholas Jordan fusing into the identity of Jordan.
The narrative switches to the voice of a woman. The woman is an environmental activist; she fantasizes about growing to an enormous size, and storming into the spaces of corporations and organizations that perpetuate environmental crimes. She explains that she began detecting high levels of mercury in water sources, and tried to alert people to this threat. However, most people are not interested in trying to stop this problem. The woman grew up with a lonely childhood, and was overweight as a child. She eventually lost the weight, and is now considered conventionally attractive. With her scientific credentials and attractive appearance, many people are confused as to why the woman became a pollution researcher and environmental activist. She often feels isolated and alone, and has not been able to pursue romantic relationships.
The narrative switches back to Dog Woman in the 17th century. It is the morning after the day that Jordan returned to England, and she and him are sitting on the beach together, near where his ship is anchored. Dog Woman thinks about how, after she murdered Preacher Scroggs, his wife seemed very happy and relieved that her husband was dead. Jordan proudly shows the pineapple to Dog Woman, and needs to get to London quickly so that he can present it to the king. Dog Woman asks Jordan about the pendant he wears; Jordan explains that the pendant was given to him by Fortunata, and goes on to share a story that Fortunata told him.
Fortunata told Jordan a story about Artemis. Artemis wanted to live alone and hunt in the woods; she did not want to get married or have children. As she wondered what kind of life she most longed for, the hunter Orion came to her camp. Artemis was both intrigued and frightened, and thought about potentially going voyaging with him. However, Orion abruptly raped her; afterwards, Artemis killed him with a scorpion. She then wandered alone across the island.
After Jordan tells the story, he and Dog Woman travel to London together. As he gets ready to meet the king, Dog Woman prepares herself; she is going to bring one of the dogs with her, in hopes that the king and his courtiers will be interested and begin to purchase the dogs she breeds.
The narrative returns to the story of Nicholas Jordan. Jack, now a successful stock broker, comes to visit Nicholas, and asks about his plans after he leaves the navy. Nicholas says that he is thinking about attempting to sail around the world, but Jack is unimpressed. Jack also complains about a newspaper article about a woman attempting to draw attention to mercury levels in water sources. He thinks that activists like her are simply causing trouble for corporate interests. Nicholas, however, admires her courage, and when he looks at her photo, he also finds her attractive.
The narrative returns to the 17th century - there has been an outbreak of plague in London. Dog Woman helps to carry the bodies of the dead to giant pits, where the bodies are burned. When she comes home, she finds Jordan delirious with fever and calling out for Fortunata. Dog Woman goes to her elderly neighbor, who is known to practice witchcraft, and demands a cure for Jordan. The neighbor provides assistance, and Jordan recovers. The plague becomes less severe, but Dog Woman finds herself haunted by the smell of decaying bodies. She is surprised when Jordan tells her that he is going to set out to sea again - despite the king offering him anything he wanted, Jordan has lived a quiet life.
In the contemporary narrative, Nicholas Jordan goes to the campsite where the environmentalist woman is living. She is camping near a factory that is dumping pollutants into the river, and she proposes that they burn down the factory.
In Dog Woman's narrative, a huge fire breaks out in London in 1666. Dog Woman is pleased when the fire breaks out, and even stokes it higher, because she believes that London has been tainted after the plague. With the fire spreading, Dog Woman and Jordan decide to begin their sea voyage. They hastily pack up and begin sailing towards the sea. Dog Woman thinks she gets a glimpse of a woman standing next to Jordan, but then the woman seems to vanish. The narrative concludes with the same scene from Jordan's perspective: he sails away knowing that he will never see London again. He briefly feels a sense of loss, but then comes to feel hopeful about the future.
Analysis
In the final section of her novel, Winterson builds on her exploration of non-linear time; she shifts from the 17th century to England in the 1990s (modern day at the time when the novel was written and published). Winterson introduces a secondary pair of protagonists (Nicholas Jordan and the woman who works as an environmental activist) who have significant similarities to the primary protagonists who dominate most of the novel; it is unclear if they are intended as reincarnations, or echoes of Jordan and Dog Woman. As the action progresses and culminates in the seemingly simultaneous occurrence of two fires, the use of different time periods seems to reinforce the novel's challenges to a binary and linear view of time in which the past can be considered distinct and separate from the present.
Nicholas Jordan wrestles with similar questions that drive Jordan: he feels pressure to achieve some sort of masculine success that is often defined by heroism and exploration. Nicholas's book catalogues important historical figures, and makes explicit the role played by explorers and seafaring men in the history of Britain. While Jordan lived during a period where discovery seemed possible in the sense of encountering previously unknown lands and species, Nicholas is afflicted with a later historical malaise: he longs to achieve greatness, but no longer knows how to do so.
The unnamed woman who becomes obsessed with protecting rivers from contaminants also parallels Dog Woman, notably through the attention to the dimensions of her body. In what is eventually revealed as a fantasy sequence, she imagines existing in a gigantic body, and using her physical bulk to impose justice on individuals and corporations who are harming the environment. She also reveals that when she was obese as a young woman, many people were repulsed by her appearance, but that she was considered much more feminine and desirable when she lost weight. These experiences reflect how her gender and physical body shape her experience in the world, contrasting with how Dog Woman's magically gigantic size empowered her in the first portion of the novel. Both Dog Woman and the unnamed woman take significant risks in order to embody their values, and fight back against powerful antagonists who they see as harming the world around them. Elizabeth Langland notes the reversal of traditional gendered roles in that there is a "tension between the women who stay at home, yet live dangerously, and the men who voyage, yet face no threat" (104).
While Nicholas Jordan struggles to find a meaningful place in the world, and the unnamed woman contends with her inability to prevent environmental destruction, Dog Woman's resilience is finally pushed past its breaking point in the final section of the novel. She is able to survive significant political and religious upheaval, but the experience of living through an epidemic leaves her permanently unsettled and uncomfortable in her home city. In 1665, London faced the last major outbreak of the bubonic plague (earlier outbreaks included the Black Death period of the 14th century); this epidemic killed approximately 100,000 people in an 18-month period. Daniel Defoe's Journal of a Plague Year (published in 1722) chronicles this epidemic.
It is unclear why Dog Woman, who has brutally and unflinchingly killed Puritans with her own hands, is unable to recover from the atrocities she witnesses during the plague. While politics were unstable and subject to human error, the monarchy had eventually been restored (1660); perhaps the plague unsettles her so deeply because it undermines her belief in a divine order that would eventually punish those who had dared to dethrone a king. Unlike political events, the plague also threatens Dog Woman on a personal level: she is at her most vulnerable when she fears that Jordan might die. Significantly, this is also a moment when the usually self-reliant Dog Woman has to be vulnerable and rely on community: she cannot heal Jordan herself.
In the aftermath of the plague, Dog Woman sees London as contaminated and tainted, offering an analogy to 20th-century England where toxic chemicals are being leached into water supplies. Both the fire that Nicholas Jordan and the unnamed woman light, and the historical fire that actually ravaged London in 1666, are presented not as disasters, but as purifying and cleansing forces. They wipe out the status quo in hope of creating space for something more positive to emerge; in the historical narrative, the outbreak of fire prompts Jordan and Dog Woman to finally leave London for an unknown but hopeful future.
On one hand, the inclusion of two narratives occurring over a gap of more than 300 years reveals that many of the problems Jordan and Dog Woman contend with continue to exist, albeit in different forms. In the 20th century, individuals are still greedy, oppressive, and unimaginative. However, in both time periods, individuals form bonds with one another, and fight for the values they believe in. Given the novel's consistent project of collapsing ideas of linear history, it also makes sense that it would challenge a belief in historical progress, and things getting better over time. Instead, the final image of the novel shows past and present as inexorably intertwined, and categories that deserve to be interrogated in their own right.
