Most ignore fear when they find themselves amidst a whirlwind romance, but the narrator of the novel, Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson has too much experience with the dangers involved with falling in love. ,”I had lately learned that another way of writing FALL IN LOVE is WALK THE PLANK. I was tired of balancing blindfold on a slender beam, one slip and into the unplumbed sea” (26). E uses the analogy of being crazy enough to become vulnerable to another person as a death sentence. The author uses these phrases, “fall in love” and “walk the plank” because they evoke opposing emotions to the reader. We are met with warmth, happiness, and partnership when we hear the term “fall in love” and then immediately distraught, dreaded, and fearful when upon encountering “walk the plank”. Later in the novel, the narrator decides to ignore this once looming idea of love and risk Em life, “I know exactly what’s happening and I know too that I am jumping out of this plane on my own free will. No, I don’t have a parachute, but worse, neither does Jacqueline” (39). Each of these quotes honors the narrator’s beliefs that love is dangerous, much like free falling, but narrator desires to take this leap because Em believes that Jacqueline is worth it.
We see in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s piece, Tendencies, the theme of death in love prevails as well. Sedgwick shocks us on page one, “Up to 30 percent of teen suicides are likely to be gay or lesbian; that a third of gay and lesbian teenagers say that they have attempted suicide” (1). This statistics, as opposed to the narrator’s comparison in Written on the body, are literal representations of gays and lesbians who feel unable to express their love and encounter their own “walking of the plank”.