Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

that sedition and controversy are fired by printed matter. Ours was not a secular house, and my mother was determined that I should have no secular influences.
    I asked my mother why we couldn't have books and she said, ‘The trouble with a book is that you never know what's in it until it's too late.’
    I thought to myself, ‘Too late for what?’
    I began to read books in secret — there was no other way — and every time I opened the pages, I wondered if this time it would be too late; a final draught (draft) that would change me forever, like Alice's bottle, like the tremendous potion in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , like the mysterious liquid that seals the fate of Tristan and Isolde.
    In myths, in legends, in fairy stories, and in all the stories that borrow from these basics, both size and shape are approximate, and subject to change. This includes the size and shape of the heart, where the beloved can suddenly be despised, or where the loathed can become the loved. Look what happens in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream when Puck's eyedrops turn Lysander from an opportunistic womaniser into a devoted husband. In Shakespeare's use of the magic potion, it is not that the object of desire itself is altered — the women are who they are — rather that the man is forced to see them differently.
    In the same play, Titania briefly falls for a clod wearing an ass's head — a mischievous use of the transforming potion, but one that questions reality: Do we see what we think we see? Do we love as we believe we love?
    Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear ... Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world.
    I used to have an anger so big it would fill up any house. I used to feel so hopeless that I was like Tom Thumb who has to hide under a chair so as not to be trodden on.
    Do you remember how Sinbad tricks the genie? Sinbad opens the bottle and out comes a three—hundred—foot—tall genie who will kill poor Sinbad stone dead. So Sinbad appeals to his vanity and bets he can't get back in the bottle. As soon as the genie does so, Sinbad stoppers the neck until the genie learns better manners.
    Jung, not Freud, liked fairy tales for what they tell us about human nature. Sometimes, often, a part of us is both volatile and powerful — the towering anger that can kill you and others, and that threatens to overwhelm everything. We can't negotiate with that powerful but enraged part of us until we teach it better manners — which means getting it back in the bottle to show who is really in charge. This isn't repression, but it is about finding a container. In therapy, the therapist acts as a container for what we daren't let out, because it is so scary, or what lets itself out every so often, and lays waste to our lives.
    The fairy tales warn us that there is no such thing as standard size — that is an illusion of industrial life
    — an illusion farmers still struggle with when trying to supply uniform vegetables to supermarkets . . . no, size is both particular and subject to change.
    The stories of the gods appearing in human form
    — scaled—down power deities — are also stories against judging by appearances — things are not what they seem.
    It seems to me that being the right size for your world — and knowing that both you and your world are not by any means fixed dimensions — is a valuable clue to learning how to live.
    Mrs Winterson was too big for her world, but she crouched gloomy and awkward under its low shelf, now and again exploding to her full three hundred feet, and towering over us. Then, because it was useless, redundant, only destructive, or so it seemed, she shrank back again, defeated.
    I am short, so I like the little guy/underdog stories, but they are not straightforwardly about one size versus another. Think about, say, Jack and the Beanstalk , which is basically a big ugly stupid giant, and a smart little Jack who is fast on his feet. OK, but the unstable element is the beanstalk, which starts as a bean and grows into a huge tree—like thing that Jack climbs to reach the castle. This bridge between two worlds is unpredictable and very surprising. And later, when the giant tries to climb after Jack, the beanstalk has to be chopped down pronto. This suggests