“Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? ‘I love you’ is always a quotation,” (Winterson 9). It is in these two lines on the first page of Written on the Body that Jeanette Winterson places what I believe to be her thesis for the work as a whole. Winterson, in an opinion I can certainly sympathize with, adores allusions. She uses them tar from sparingly in this work, and each can be tied back to this central position: that perhaps the words we need are not always our own. Just after this paragraph, the narrator includes a quote from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In this passage, the maligned character of Caliban speaks against the play’s protagonists who have settled on his native island: “You taught me language and my profit on’t is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you for learning me your language.” What does it mean for the narrator that Caliban’s language is not his own, and yet the primary tool of expression he is given? On the very next page, Winterson enters an extended metaphor to the tune of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. “Love demands expression,” and this is what the entirety of the work strives to accomplish. As a translator, the narrator is intimately familiar with the words of others—perhaps maddeningly so. The words of others, not unlike the primary language spoken in The Tempest, become the avenue through which the speaker explores themself and those around them. Caliban’s outrage, Alice’s confusion, Jane Eyre’s devotion, Eve’s original sin, and Mercutio’s fatal hubris all become winters on in the great tapestry of language.
title taken from act 1 scene 2 of the tempest!
This response got me to think about not only how the narrator articulates love, among other things, but also how we as readers get to know the narrator themselves. We largely learn and know the narrator via their interactions and pasts with their partners, and the effects these relationships have had on them. To my recollection, we learn very little about the narrator that is strictly limited to themself (even their personal career relies on other people’s language and impact because they are a professional translator). Not only does the narrator express themselves in the quotations of others, they have conveyed their identity as it relates to others. Although, as we’ve discussed, much of our identity can hinge on what we are to others, and the marks other people have left on us.
I hadn’t even thought of this before. How, you said, that since the narrator is a translator, they speak in allusions since this is the way they know how to communicate. Frankly, I did not understand many of them, however, I did understand one from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, “Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them but not for love” (more or less, this is the quotation). I think this narrator truly loves Shakespeare. Which is very on theme as the concept of queer is often associated with his plays. Additionally, I thought this was interesting as you said the speaker communicates through allusions. In this specific one to As You Like It, the narrator is quoting Rosalind who is dressed as a man, Ganymede. The gender of this character is super ambiguous throughout the play, and I think that connects really well to who the narrator is, as they also have an ambiguous gender. By translating these allusions into their own reality, I agree and believe the narrator reveals a bit about themself through each of these allusions – whether they are feeling the same emotions or feel a kinship with these characters.