“The body that has lain beside you in sickness and in health. The body your arms still long for dead or not. You were intimate with every muscle, privy to the eyelids moving in sleep. This is the body where you name is written, passing in to the hands of strangers” (178).
As of right now the narrator has found themself in a cemetery. This is apt for such a depressing time in the narrator’s journey as they grieve their relationship with Louise. This passage I found extremely interesting because it highlights on the idea of defining love by loss, and can almost directly be tied to common cliché of you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone. This passage also addresses the one we close read in class on Wednesday, although now the meaning has somewhat shifted now that Louise is no longer with the narrator.
This passages addresses what happens to a beloved’s body once they have deceased, and in a way Louise is dead to the narrator not only because she’s absent, but because she’s terminally ill. The words you/your repeat a lot in this passage, but instead the you/your doesn’t reference Louise, the narrator is speaking directly to us. We are the you. Now the narrator is spelling out your loss, your grief, your depression. The direction has shifted from Louise to the actual audience, highlighting on the fact that we are all capable of love and almost indefinitely loss, more specifically the loss of the physical body. The arms, muscle, eyelids, and hands of your lover’s body, that really are your heart’s property. For once the body is gone, what is left to love?
Winterson, I believe, wary of clichés and the language of love, chooses to share the message that love cannot be expressed through language, but through bodily actions and marking each other’s bodies as our own. The language of love has been around forever, but maybe instead we should look at the ways we imprint on, write on, and seize other bodies rather than reading about the hopeless romantics in novels. Winterson is highlighting on the inexpressible, bodily idea of love. That by focusing on the connection between your body and your lovers body (“eyelids moving in sleep”, “intimate with every muscle”, “body that has lain beside you”) you can find love. The narrator, and Winterson has decided that true nature of love cannot be written down, for only our bodies can carry the weight of our words.
I like the fact that you assume the narrator is talking directly to the reader of a subject that everyone has experienced at least once in his/her life: the loss of someone or something in someone. As you point it out, loss can be expressed by the absence of someone (here the narrator is in a cemetery). But the feeling of loss can also be perceptible even though the person is still alive (such as Louise’s illness).
Also, your emphasis on the body is interesting, and I really like the very last part of your post: “for only our bodies can carry the weight of our words”. I think this sums up pretty well the whole novel. However, I do not completely agree with you assuming the narrator and Winterson are sort of the same. But if you do, I would be interested to know what your arguments are.