The Gap of Time: The Creative Cycle of a Story

Jeanette Winterson’s novel The Gap of Time, a re-writing of Shake¬speare’s romance The Winter’s Tale, brings to the fore the function of Time as a means to repair the mistakes and losses in an individual’s past. Shakespeare’s characters and events are re-created in a totally new narrative which comes to its end in a rather sudden way, leaving ques¬tions open and, above all, with the assertion that stories can be resumed and re-written anew in an endless process of literary creation. Interest¬ingly, in the end Winterson leaves her role as narrator and speaks to her readers in the first person both to confess her own personal involvement in the story and her identification, since she herself was a foundling, with Perdita, and to offer her comments as literary critic not only on The Winter’s Tale but on other plays by Shakespeare where the themes of time and forgiveness are particularly relevant. The conclusion is, again, more personal and autobiographical, offering Winterson’s meditation on her own reality, the reality of life, and the power of love.