Tag: written on the body

the Piranesi nightmare

“Reason. I was caught in a Piranesi nightmare. The logical paths the proper steps led nowhere. My mind took me up tortuous staircases that opened into doors that opened into nothing.” (p.92)

The following text passage stroke me as very interesting when I read it, especially the mention of the “Piranesi nightmare”. There is a novel called Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, published in 2020, that I read last summer. It is set in a parallel world that is one endless house with an infinite number of staircases, halls and big rooms full of statues. The novel deals with various topics, among them being lost and finding oneself. After finishing the novel I did some research on Piranesi and found out that the novel was referring to the Italian Artist G. B. Piranesi, who, among other things, has produced a series with 16 prints called “Imaginary Prisons” in the 18th Century. It is also interesting, that WOTB is a lot older than Clarke’s novel Piranesi, which raises the question how Piranesi might shape newer interpretations of the mention of “Piranesi nightmare” in WOTB.

I see a reoccurring pattern in my chosen quote from WOTB, parts that can be grouped together, namely “Piranesi nightmare”, “steps leading nowhere” and “tortuous staircases opening into doors into nothing’”. All these parts have parallels to the novel Piranesi, where Piranesi, the main protagonist lives in this endless house with infinite rooms and staircases, leading to more rooms, but ultimately to “nothing”. They also resemble a labyrinth, a term that can also be associated with the artist Piranesi. The narrator feels lost in his own mind. This can also be connected to the very first word of the paragraph, “Reason”. It is interesting that the first sentence of the paragraph is just one word. Reason is a powerful word and can both mean an individual reason to do something as well as a greater, more general meaning and question of reason, almost philosophical as in “why do we do things in the way that we do them and why do we decide what we decide”.

What I am really trying to say here is that I think these lines are showing us how overthinking and analyzing can make us feel lost because we try to find a logical explanation for everything, when in reality, not every question has an answer. Reason gives us seemingly comfort, but actually it’s a nightmare, desperately trying to find an explanation for everything, thinking in complicated ways to make sense into things that aren’t supposed to make sense, just to frustratingly end up in “nothing” at the end. If we free ourselves from the urge to bring sense into everything, we free ourselves from this nightmare of a labyrinth, and thereby bring sense into it. The sense is that not everything can be explained with sense. Maybe the nameless narrator of WOTB also feel imprisoned by reason and his own mind.

This pattern of urge toward reason or explanation can also be seen in other parts of the novel, for example is the narrator trying to fight Louise’s cancer with reason, learning as much as they can about it. In the end though, cancer still does not completely make sense, since there often is no logical explanation as to when and why it develops in the body.

Narrator and trust

“To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Oddly, your hands should be full with all that you are taking, but when you open them up there’s nothing there.” (pg 77)

At this moment in the novel, the narrator is reflecting on their experiences with cheating on their partners. I thought that this section reflected on their attitude regarding sleeping with married women, and them trying to rationalize their actions. The first part of the quote shows that the initial break of trust does not cost them anything. This then leads from going to a one time mistake, to a full blown affair. I think that the second part where the author says “you open them up and there’s nothing there” reflects the little remorse that they are actually feeling. In the case of Louise, they are so caught up in their obsession with her that they barely even notice the trust they are taking from Jacqueline. 

  I think that the narrator repeats “more” and “take” showing that they think that they are holding the power in their situation. They can take their fidelity from their partner and they still believe that they have the upper hand. I also found it interesting that with many other parts of the novel, the metaphor that was used was related to the body, using hands as the method of taking. This shows the  

I connected this to the narrator’s feelings on marriage. In a similar passage they say that “no one can legislate love” (pg 77) and “marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire.” I think they are passionate about their distaste for marriage as a way to justify their affairs. This also connects to the novel as whole with the theme of trust. Although they believed they were doing the right thing when they left Louise with Elgin, they broke her trust. They continue to see themselves in a position of power, deciding how and when the relationship ends. They believed that they were morally correct in this situation, despite taking the same that they took from Jaquiline in the beginning of their affair, her trust. 

 

The Difference Between Loving and Becoming

“You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it’s not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?” (99)

The protagonist in Written on the Body loses themselves to their obsession with becoming Louise, not loving her. Winterson warns about the dangers of perception — how our own perceptions and views of a situation can cause us to ignore the desires of others. Five months into their relationship, the narrator has adopted the essence of Louise, both her personality and physical being. Through their ruminations on past lovers, one can notice that the protagonist picks up traits and copies the actions of their current lover. For example, they imitate their terrorist girlfriend, Inge, or try to emulate Jacqueline’s stability and want for a “normal” relationship. The narrator has always tried to match their partner, whether that’s to seem more appealing or simply because of their own lack of an individual personality, but never to the same level as they have with Louise. 

Here, the protagonist blurs the line between “you” and “me,” making “your blood/body” their own. Through the symbol of a mirror, the narrator sees themselves as a reflection or copy of Louise, literally seeing her face in the mirror. The narrator has no physical manifestation of who they are, and this is heightened by the lack of an assigned name and gender. The narrator instead is meant to reflect the experiences and personality of others, whether that is the reader who projects onto them or the other characters in the story whose personality they adopt. Mirrors are often used to represent the true self, which the narrator sees as Louise. By saying “once you once me,” the narrator implies that what once was Louise’s — namely her face, body, and personality — is now theirs, so much so that you can no longer differentiate them from one another. 

There’s this common theme throughout the novel that “it’s the cliches that cause the trouble.” The trope of two lovers becoming so intimate and in tune with one another that they become one soul is common, however this is perverted by the narrator, who wants to become Louise instead of “combining” with her. Louise is a very passive figure in the novel, who’s fate and control over her own body is decided by Elgin and the narrator. Both believe they have a claim to her body, and that their ideas and wishes are the same as hers. Namely, the narrator thinks their decision to leave aligns with Louise’s, because they think they are Louise. The narrator ignores Louise’s real wishes and her distrust of Elgin, instead deciding the fate of the body, their body, on their own. This “one mind, one body” mindset ignores Louise’s individuality, making her a passive owner of her own body. 

Interestingly enough, the narrator sees themself as the worst part of Louise, a part that is hurting and killing her by staying in the relationship. So, by cutting themselves out of Louise, like a tumor, they can “save her” from her cancer. However, just like a body part that has been amputated or removed, the narrator can barely survive on their own, doomed to wander aimlessly without the rest of it. This trope of a soulmate, or someone who is not whole without their lover, reappears here, with the narrator not being whole without the rest of their body and soul. The narrator’s worrying obsession and reliance on Louise as a source for life, literally their blood and body, points out the unhealthy dynamic in this relationship. The narrator doesn’t seem to love Louise for who she is, the strong woman who will do anything to leave her husband, but as a body, a thing, that can be used and abandoned. This warped perception of their body and the relationship only causes pain for both of them, and serves as a warning to the projecting reader. 

Jacqueline and ‘Normal’

“I wanted the clichés, the armchair. I wanted the broad road and twenty-twenty vision. What’s wrong with that? It’s called growing up. Maybe most people gloss their comforts with a patina of romance but it soon wears off. They’re in it for the long haul; the expanding waistline and the little semi in the suburbs. What’s wrong with that? Late-night TV and snoring side by side into the millennium. Till death us do part. Anniversary darling? What’s wrong with that?” (Winterson, 26)

This passage comes at a point in Winterson’s text where the narrator has just met Jacqueline and is trying to decide whether a relationship with her is what she wants and/or needs. Jacqueline is different from anyone the narrator has previously been with: “She worked nine to five Monday to Friday, drove a Mini and got her reading from book clubs. She exhibited no fetishes, foibles, freak-outs or fuck-ups. Above all she was single and she had always been single. No children and no husband” (26). Jacqueline is strikingly normal and mundane, and as the narrator considers their past relationships, they find themself wanting to test the waters of normalcy. They are thinking in circles, considering what they want, what they need, what they should want, and how being with Jacqueline will be different. Deep down, however, they know a relationship with her will never be fulfilling. The repeated question “what’s wrong with that?” clues the reader in to the narrator’s anxieties around long-term commitment and their fear of an unsatisfying relationship, and shows that they are questioning whether they can really be happy with Jacqueline. The narrator seems to be trying to convince themselves that “growing up” and settling into a comfortable, clichéd relationship isn’t actually that bad; however, the way they imagine that relationship reveals a different story, as they describe a loss of romance, growing old with their partner, and having nothing more exciting than late-night TV and anniversaries to look forward to. The relationship becomes stagnant, unchanging, and boring. “What’s wrong with that?” the narrator asks themself. Nothing, except that a stagnant, boring relationship is at odds with what they really want. 

When considering this passage alongside ideas of ‘normal’ and ‘queerness’ as imagined by Warner and Rubin, it becomes apparent that the narrator is trying to reconcile their queerness with the desire to conform to given norms. Though the narrator’s gender and sexuality are never revealed, they fit into several categories in the “outer limits” or “bad/abnormal/unnatural” section of Rubin’s sexual hierarchy. They are unmarried, promiscuous, and their sex life is focused on pleasure rather than procreation; regardless of their gender, they have had relationships with both men and women, and thus can also fit into the category of homosexuality. Jaqueline, on the other hand, seems to fall into more of the “good/normal/natural” categories, though not entirely. Her sexuality is rather complex, as she is introduced as “the mistress of one of [the narrator’s friends] the confidante of both… She traded sex and sympathy for £50 to tide her over the weekend and a square meal on Sunday” (25). She therefore fits the “commercial” and (potentially) “sadomasochistic” categories in Rubin’s sexual hierarchy. Yet the narrator believes a relationship with her will be calm, clichéd, and normal, to the point of boredom. There is no passion between the two of them, and once together, their sex life becomes stagnant (28); it doesn’t seem too much to assume, considering the boredom and lack of romance, that it is private and vanilla as well. The narrator wants to try this calm, mundane kind of relationship with Jacqueline, seeing it and her as a welcome respite from the affairs they have had in the past. The problem is, the narrator is lying to themself on some level. They insist that they want “the clichés, the armchair,” when in reality, they will eventually become bored and frustrated with Jacqueline and her mundanity and leave her, choosing Louise and queerness over Jacqueline and normalcy.

The laws of love

“Two hundred miles from the surface of the earth, there is no gravity. The laws of motion are suspended. You could turn somersaults slowly slowly, weight into weightlessness, nowhere to fall… You will break up bone by bone, fractured from who you are, you are drifting away now, the centre cannot hold” (100).

This passage from Written on the Body speaks volumes. The repetition of words related to science, physics, space, and motion (such as earth, gravity, laws of motion, weight, bone, etc.) is critical to understanding this moment in the novel. The laws of motion are considered by most to be absolute, unchangeable and fixed. However, just 200 miles from where we all stand on Earth, everything we think we know about physics is wrong. We are rooted to the earth through gravity, but in a moment, we can be lifted from normalcy and brought into weightlessness with nowhere to fall.

Much like a scientific fact, the narrator thought they knew everything about Louise and everything about their life together. Yet, because of just one sentence, everything crumbled to pieces. Not only was their life with Louise shattered, but even the narrator themself was “fractured from who [they] were, drifting away now” (100). When something as easily accepted and important as gravity, or in this case, true love, breaks, who you are breaks with it.

As another student mentioned in class, “the centre cannot hold” comes from a Yeats poem titled “The Second Coming”. In my opinion, both the poem and the novel’s passage refer to absolute chaos erupting from the seams of the world. Louise was the narrator’s world and imagining a life without her was like imagining life without the laws of motion- impossible.

“She smells of the sea”: Sexuality and the Senses

“She smells of the sea. She smells of rockpools when I was a child. She keeps starfish in there. I crouch down to taste the salt, to run my fingers around the rim. She opens and shuts like a sea anemone. She’s refilled each day with fresh tides of longing.” (73)

The connection to the ocean is significant. Sexuality as fluid. Sexuality as connection—that is, as taste and smell over sight. There is no separation by viewing, no watcher and watched to create an object out of a person. Taste and smell are visceral and they bring the narrator and Louise together. There is no distance between partners.

This happens in conjunction with the curious language of exploration, i.e. “rockpools when I was a child” and “to run my fingers around the rim.” Here, in this passage, the narrator comes to know Louise’s body. He or she explores through sex, and there is a certain child-like quality to this, this tendency towards play and taste and smell.

What I’m really trying to say here is that maybe people grow out of equal connection. Maybe the tendency to produce a viewer and a viewed object during sex is a learned one. Maybe we grow into this distance as we learn to prioritize one sense over the others. This passage connects taste and smell and touch to a time of innocence, of ignorance. Not willful ignorance, but the kind of ignorance that can and must be remedied through exploration.

The narrator is exploring and thereby learning about Louise’s body in this passage, and through this, he or she comes to know Louise.

The inside of your body is innocent

“Will you let me crawl inside you, stand guard over you, trap them as they come at you? Why can’t I dam their blind tide that filthies your blood? Why are there no lock gates on the portal vein? The inside of your body is innocent, nothing has taught it fear. Your artery canals trust their cargo, they don’t check the shipment in the blood.” (115)

The narrator is asking themselves multiple rhetoric questions about the human body, and how the sickness that is affecting Louise’s body manages to take hold. The questions are filled with naïve and hopeful imagery, of “gates” that could be closed to keep cancer out of the body. The narrator is using the questions to cope with the facts they have just learned about the sickness that will cause their lover to die.

The passage is lined with a theme of ships and the sea. The narrator uses words like “tide”, “canals”, “cargo” and “shipment” to describe the ways in which the sickness is transported through the body. They also describe the trust the body has in the “shipment” that is being transported. The body does not expect a deathly attack of cancer cells and is consequently not prepared to defend it.

Parallel to that, one could compare the narrator to Louise’s body. They have never lost a lover to a deadly sickness, or death at all for that matter. They are innocent, no one has taught them this specific kind of fear. The narrator didn’t check the “cargo”, the “shipment”, that Louise is carrying with her because they never had to before. Maybe they would have wished for a “lock gate” themselves, to protect their heart from hurt and pain. However, it is already too late. They have fallen in love with Louise and Louise is going to die. There is no changing nature. They can try to prolong Louise’s life, fight cancer as long and hard as possible – only at a terribly painful prize.

Impossibly Hard: Sexual Stigma and the Ten Commandments

“I used to think that Christ was wrong, impossibly hard, when he said that to imagine committing adultery was just as bad as doing it” (38).
At this point in the novel, the narrator has just finished having a secret dinner with Louise. This passage belongs to an internal dialogue following the dinner in which the narrator explores their new-found love for Louise.
In this passage, the narrator references Jesus Christ’s judgments about committing adultery. By stating, “I used to think that Christ was wrong…” the narrator recognizes their prior ambivalence to Christ’s moral guidance. The use of the words, “impossibly hard,” further suggest that it would be practically impossible to commit adultery just by thinking. One would have to be impossibly consumed by lust for Christ’s words to have credibility. Yet, the use of the past tense suggest that they have now changed their mind and agree with what Christ warns. Throughout the novel, the narrator describes the multiple affairs they have had with married women. Yet, they have never arrived to the conclusion that thinking about an affair was just as bad as acting on it. This shows that the narrator’s feelings for Louise constitute something “different.” The narrator has reached the place where they feel so “impossibly hard” with love and lust for Louise that imagining committing adultery becomes just as bad as doing it.
The specific use of the words “committing adultery” reflect the terminology used in the Ten Commandments. Throughout the novel, the narrator seems to go against all of the socially constructed “rules” for relationships. Yet, in this passage they agree with one of the most steadfast rules of Christianity; “Thou shall not commit adultery.” Although the narrator disobeys the “rules” in some contexts, this passage reflects just how internalized sexual stigma can be (Warner 2-3).

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.

 

Born to Die

What is the point of movement when movement indicates life and life indicates hope?  I have neither life nor hope.  Better than to fall in with the crumbling wainscot, to settle with the dust and be drawn up into someone’s nostrils.  Daily we breathe the dead” (108)

Perhaps the most obvious syntactical choice in this passage is the structure of the first sentence.  The “x begets y begets z” form instantly implies unflagging forward motion. Word choices such as “fall” and “drawn up” conjure the idea of a cycle, and the narrator’s repetition of words such as “life” and “dead” lead me to believe that ze is referring to the circle of life.  To live, we must breathe.  However, the narrator makes the point that the air we breathe, the key to life as many would argue, consists of the dead.  That image in and of itself it wonderfully poetic.

While my explication of the passage could end there, with that dark yet beautiful image, I think that it connects really well to Judith Halberstam’s piece called “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies.”  Halberstam introduces to us the idea of “queer time” (1).  The heteronormative timeline is generally considered to play out as follows: birth, school, job, spouse, kids, retirement, and finally death.  However, Halberstam poses the idea of “queer time” that breaks this timeline, as it focuses on “other logics of location, movement, and identification” rather than “reproduction” (1).  The narrator actually addresses this idea in a passage soon after the one I chose to analyze, listing the “characteristics of living things” that she was taught in school.  In fact, ze goes on to say, “I don’t want to reproduce, I want to make something entirely new” (108).

Halberstam’s idea of “queer time” allows us to eliminate reproduction from the list of “characteristics of living things” that exacerbate the narrator (108).  In fact, of all the aspects of life that “queer time” allows us to move around or eliminate, birth and death are the only two constants.  We will all be born, and our lives will all push forward until we die, our dust mixing into the atmosphere to sustain the new life to come.  Beyond that, it is fair to say that nothing else is constant.  We our slaves to our own desires, but our own desires are just that; our own.  Just as desires vary from person to person, so should the characteristics and timelines of our lives.   Perhaps if the narrator was able to read some of Halberstam’s work, ze would struggle less with how zir own wants and desires don’t fit into the supposed timeline we’re all supposed to follow.