When Jeanette Winterson is thrown out of her house at just sixteen years old, she begins sleeping in the “beaten-up old Mini” on which she has been learning to drive. A boy at church whose parents gave him a car without realizing that he was terrified of driving has effectively given it to Jeanette, and, with nowhere else to go, she makes the car her home. She sits in the front to read and eat, and lies down in the back to sleep—the distinction to her is very important as she attempts to cobble together some order out of her “dislodged” life. When she confesses the state of affairs to the head of English at her junior college, Mrs. Ratlow, Jeanette is offered a place to stay and a key to the Ratlow home—“I have never had a key,” Jeanette says, “except to the Mini.” The Mini is therefore a contradictory object that symbolizes both the first autonomous space Jeanette has ever had and also the depth of the solitude and isolation that Mrs. Winterson forced her to endure.
Jeanette’s Mini Cooper Symbol Timeline in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
