Storytelling Therapy

Even though the novels/plays we have read in class, at first glance, do not appear to have a lot in common with each other, all of them deal with the importance of telling a story. Telling their story, and how it affected those around them, is the only way Gallimard (M. Butterfly), Tyler and Mala (Cereus Blooms at Night), D. Jekyll (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), and the unnamed narrator of Written on the body have in order to cope. As Tyler realizes in Cereus Blooms at Night, the other options for “those of us, feeling unsafe and unprotected [are] either […] running far away from everything we know and love, or staying and simply going mad” (Mootoo 90).

Had Jeckyll found a way to share his story before trying to cast off “the doom and burthen of [his] life” (Stevenson 43), maybe he would have found a way to cope with his ‘dark side’, instead of creating Hyde. However, because he was too scared to share his story in order to be “relieved of all that was unbearable” (43) Hyde was created, and Jekyll had to go through the horror of his doom and burthen returning “with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure” (43). In the End, the only way he could cope, could die with a feeling of release, was by sharing his story with Utterson.

In a similar way, Mala might have been able to escape her father’s abuse, had she not kept quiet about it. In the end, Tyler shares her story with the world, as she is not able to, offering her and him, as their stories are intertwined, a chance for release – a chance to cope with their past and present. Tyler realizes the importance for Mala to tell her story, in order to reconnect with her sister. What he does not realize at first however, is the importance for him to tell his own story. In the preface he makes clear that his “own intention, as the relater of this story, is not to bring notice to [himself] or [his] own plight” but then goes on to ask the reader to “forgive the lapses […] and read them with the understanding that to have erased them would have been to do the same to [himself]” (Mootoo 3). He needs to tell his own story in order to cope with his difference, and to explain how Mala played part in his journey to find his own gender identity.

Telling their stories helps both Jekyll and Tyler to come to terms with who they are and that they cannot change that, no matter how hard they try to be something/someone else, something ‘normal’, something ‘better’.

 

 

 

They shared more than a common friend

I felt she had been watching me and seeing the same things everyone else saw. But she had stolen a dress for me. No one had ever done anything like that before. She knows what I am, she knows my nature. (76)

Without knowing why, he wanted to share his secret with Mala Ramchandin, even at the risk of being caught walking the streets dressed like a woman. (121)

Even before their shared storyline evolves, Tyler and Otoh share more than knowing Mala Ramchandin. Both of them have a secret when it comes to their identity and their sexuality; and both of them share their secret with Mala.

Tyler is caught in a state of limbo. He is aware that he is not like other men, yet he also knows that he is not a woman. He is constantly trying to figure out who he is, while at the same time desperately trying to hide his findings about himself from the rest of the world. He knows that people are talking about him, making assumptions about himself and, as he puts it, his perversion.

He is constantly trying to perform a gender role that he cannot truly identify with. However, he does not “pass”, as Kate Bornstein would put it, and people realize that something about him is different. This becomes particularly evident when looking at the use of the words ‘watching’, ‘seeing’, and ‘saw’ in the first sentence of the quote. Tyler feels that he is constantly under observation, and thus he lives in constant fear of being discovered, for people to “know [his] true nature”. The way the last sentence of his quote is written shows this fear: “She knows what I am, she knows my true nature”. The repetition of ‘she knows’ emphasizes that that she knows is more important to him than what she knows. At this point he can only assume what Mala thinks or knows, yet, he is already convinced that she knows what he is trying to hide. He does not even consider that the dress could have any other meaning. Furthermore, he is afraid of her discovering and judging his un-normalness. By saying ‘what I am’ instead of ‘who I am’ Tyler makes it clear that he himself thinks that he is abnormal and perverse, that his true nature is not human.

Yet, he is beginning to see that Mala might not be like other people. She has already done something that others never have, she has given him a dress to wear. She allows him to have something that does not match his gender performance, to break free from the prison he has put himself in. It is also important that she has actively acquired the dress; she had stolen it. This shows Tyler that Mala had actively done something in order to try to make him happy. Thus, “she knows what I am, she knows my true nature” can also be read as the relief Tyler feels knowing that he does not have to carry the burden of his secret by himself anymore.

Otoh on the other hand, performs his chosen gender role so well, that even his parents forgot that he was born a girl. While Tyler is constantly trying to perform the gender he was born with, Otoh needs to hide it. Yet, he chooses to show himself to Mala wearing a dress, although he has never actually met her before. Otoh seems to sense what Tyler is currently discovering – that Mala “was not one to manacle nature” (77). It seems that only with Mala both of them can be their entire self. Only with her they do not feel the need to conceal a part of who they are.

 

Growing Up is Hard to Do

Sex can feel like love or maybe it’s guilt that makes me call sex love. I’ve been through so much I should know just what it is I’m doing with Louise. I should be a grown up by now. Why do I feel like a convent virgin? (94)

The narrator of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body is waiting for his/her married lover Louise to make a decision on how to proceed with their relationship. Louise’s husband Elgin is aware of their affair, yet they remain married. However, all three of them have come to realize that something needs to change and the narrator is waiting for Louise to choose between her marriage and her affair.

The narrator is wondering if the love Louise has said she has for him/her is truly love and not just an illusion created by sex. By saying that guilt may make sex feel like love, the narrator is suggesting that we like to hide behind love. We are afraid of the shame we might encounter if we have sex for nothing but pleasure. As Michael Warner points out in his book The Trouble with Normal, we are constantly looking for a way to handle our sexual shame, to get rid of it. We want to “pin it on someone else” (Warner, 3), or in this case something else. If we say we love someone, our sexual shame is automatically reduced because it is far more ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ within our society to have sex with someone you love than having sex for your own pleasure.

Even though the reader still doesn’t know if the narrator is male or female, he/she clearly lives on, as Judith Halberstam would put it, ‘Queer Time’. Indulging in numerous relationships with (married) partners of both sexes, not settling down, and clearly challenging “conventional forms of association, belonging, and identification” (Halberstam, 4), the narrator does not follow the traditional life span of school, marriage, kids, a steady job, and retirement. Instead, the narrator realizes himself/herself that he/she is not yet a grown up, does not fit the norm. He/she is aware that society expects him/her to end the affair; that he/she should know what ‘is right’ by looking at his/her life and the mistakes made, the lessons learned. Nevertheless, the narrator feels like a ‘convent virgin’: childlike, innocent, and clueless.

Although the narrator at one point believes that Louise will not, under any circumstances, choose to end her marriage, the comparison to feeling like a convent virgin furthermore suggests the narrator’s hope and faith that their love will prevail against all odds, against the norm, and against his/her fears. It shows the narrator’s hope that not following the norm will pay off in the end and lead to happiness.

 

If this is love, then love is easy.. or is it not?

Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to each other is still the thing we long to hear? ‘I love you’ is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. (9)

I don’t like to think of myself as an insincere person but if I say I love you and I don’t mean it then what else am I? Will I cherish you, adore you, make way for you, make myself better for you, look at you and always see you, tell you the truth? And if love is not those things then what things? (11)

In both of these passages the unidentified narrator of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body asks one of the most vital questions of mankind (and the singer Haddaway): ‘What is love?’. He or she wonders why hearing somebody say ‘I love you’ is such an important thing for us and if it shouldn’t be more important how we convey our own personal notion of love.

Even though, as the narrator points out, the words are unoriginal and have been said many times before, we long to hear them and make a big deal out of them, almost worshiping them. They give us a feeling of security, security that our significant other can’t possible leave us, as he/she said those magical three words. Words that many might only say because they feel pressured into it. Pressured by society, their partner, friends, parents, etc. And haven’t they most likely said I love you to somebody else before? Haven’t they had relationships before that didn’t work out even though they assured themselves they loved each other over and over again?

The narrator realizes that we need to be sure to only say ‘I love you’ when we truly mean it and when we can support these words with our actions. Only then there is a slight chance that it is actually love. Because we can’t possibly ever know what love truly means, can we? Who knows if there isn’t always somebody out there who we would love ‘more’ if ever given the chance of meeting each other? And isn’t it the beauty of love that it feels different for each and every one of us and with every partner that we’re with? It evolves, grows and changes, with us. That is what makes everybody’s love special.

When wondering what love is, the narrator repeatedly uses the word ‘you’. He/she realizes that love is not about yourself but about the person you are with. There is no ‘I’ in love. Love should always be about the other person. It should never be about what you think the other person may want or need but about truly listening to them, hearing them, seeing them for who they are.

Looking back at his/her previous relationships the narrator makes a conscious decision not to say ‘I love you’ to his/her current partner Louise until he/she can be sure that it is really love. However, the question remains if the narrator will successfully follow his/her ideals until the end of story. In the end, love, with all its emotions, usually gets the better of us.

What Makes Us Human

“I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders; and when attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.” (43)

In this passage of The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll reflects back on his decision to attempt to split his evil side from himself. He expresses his regret and that his, at first seemingly great idea, backfired and, in the end, made him more miserable than before. What I find interesting is that he expresses his coming to that knowledge not as a learning process that he made, but that something/someone made him come to that conclusion. It makes me wonder if he feels that he turning into Mr. Hyde was, for the most part, his destiny. The way he expresses himself in this passage, from a letter to Mr. Utterson to explain himself after his death, sounds like a warning. A warning to mankind never to try to repeat his doings. The second time he uses the word ‘made’ in his sentence, Dr. Jekyll also acknowledges, that he has failed in his attempt to cast off the “doom and burthen” (43) of his life. Though it seems as if it had worked in the beginning, he soon finds that he has rather enforced his evilness and given it the power to take over his ’good’ side. It is a metaphor of the importance for a balanced scale of good and evil. Having both of these sides in us, and keeping them in balance, is what makes us human and we cannot survive without them.