25 pages • 50 minutes read
Jeanette WintersonThe Passion
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2 Summary: Pages 46-62
“The Queen of Spades,” the second part of The Passion, begins by retelling the 1797 fall of the Republic of Venice, wherein Napoleon conquered Venice. The section is narrated by a young Venetian woman called Villanelle. Villanelle tells the reader that all the fishermen in Venice have webbed feet. Her father, having shown his feet to a tourist for money, consequently loses his webbed feet and is taken to a mental institution. At the time, her mother is pregnant with her, unbeknownst to her father. Her mother quickly marries a sensible baker, who becomes Villanelle’s stepfather. Her mother makes the ritual journey to an island at full moon, wherein mothers-to-be leave an offering on a gravesite for their sons to have webbed feet and for their daughters to have clean hearts. However, Villanelle’s mother does not complete the ritual, and Villanelle is born the only girl in the history of boatmen with webbed feet.
When Villanelle grows up, she cross-dresses and deals cards in the Venetian casinos that cater to tourists. One night she is smitten with a woman with gray-green eyes and dark red hair who draws the queen of spades, the symbol of Venice. The woman disappears, leaving behind nothing but a bottle of expensive champagne and a Roman earring made of yellow gold. Villanelle obsesses over the woman for months. In the meantime, a rich, unattractive meat seller who frequents the casino asks Villanelle to be his wife on the condition that she continues to cross-dress in their home. When she refuses him, he slaps her.
Part 2 Summary: Pages 63-76
The mysterious woman from the casino finds Villanelle again, sending her the other earring via a waiter at a bar. The two agree to have dinner, but Villanelle frets that the woman thinks she is a man. She decides to continue hiding her sex for more time with the woman, justifying, “And what was myself? Was this breeches and boots self any less real than my garters?” (63). The night they meet again, the woman tells Villanelle that she cannot make love but they can kiss. They do not touch each other save for their lips. According to Villanelle:
Kissing in this way is the strangest of distractions. The greedy body that clamours for satisfaction is forced to content itself with a single sensation and, just as the blind hear more acutely and the deaf can feel the grass grow, so the mouth becomes the focus of love […] It is a sweet and precise torture (64).
Villanelle later reveals to her lover that she is a woman, and her lover replies that she knows. As Villanelle’s passion for the woman grows, she curses her heart that runs wild without her consent, noting, “Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back is worse” (65).
Villanelle worries that the woman does not really love her but loves the game of their love, musing, “Perhaps this is her passion. Passion out of passion’s obstacle” (67). On New Year’s Eve 1804, Villanelle happens to pass her lover’s house and glimpses of her love and her husband sharing a sweet moment. Heartbroken, she realizes that she and her lover will never share this same kind of intimacy and tenderness.
Part 2 Analysis
Passion continues to emerge as a theme, which Villanelle repeatedly insists is “somewhere between fear and sex.” Like Henri, Villanelle questions the connection between passion and religion. She wonders whether people use religion to mitigate their fears. This fixation on passion parlays into a rumination on paradox and the many hypocrisies of love and religion. Like Henri’s village, Venetian faith toggles between religious fervor and outright blasphemy. However, Venetians acknowledge and embrace this fluidity, weaving it into the very fabric of life.
Villanelle symbolizes The Passion’s emerging theme of fluid sexuality. She possesses the webbed feet historically reserved for Venetian fishermen, freely sleeps with both men and women, and moves comfortably between genders, cross-dressing for a living. Her lack of allegiance to binaries is underscored by her mystical descriptions of Venice, a place where fantasy, hedonism, and philosophy meet. However, Villanelle’s undoing is her heart. “I am pragmatic about love,” Villanelle insists, “but I have never needed a guard for my heart” (56). Ironically, it is the opening of Villanelle’s heart that leads to the most monumental events of her life.
Related Titles
By Jeanette Winterson
