Life and Rot in “Written on the Body”

The narrator of Written on the Body consistently has these beautiful excerpts between normal observation or action that abstractly articulates this person’s thoughts. They are often profound, cosmic, or meta. When the narrator arrives at the cottage after leaving Louise, there is this section where they are describing their house, and it evolves into this commentary on “movement” and “life” accompanied by naturalistic imagery (107). The narrator states, “I want to rot here, slowly sinking into the faded pattern invisible against the dead roses,” then proceeds to personify death in themselves by saying “Death’s head in the chair, the rose chair in the stagnant garden” (107). There is this consistency with life and death or nature and rot that the narrator circles back to throughout this passage and the novel. These two sentences feel almost as if they are inverses. The narrator wants to rot, but is alive, while the roses are dead. In the second sentence, the narrator is dead (synonymous with rot), and the roses have become placed in a garden (associated with life). These sentences are tied to the current plot of the book: Louise’s cancer and the inevitability of death. Louise has cancer in her blood, and one could associate the sickness with the rot the narrator is speaking of. Louise has always been this character that is full of light and life as seen through the narrator’s eyes. There could be this conflict within the narrator of wanting themself to rot/to personify death, and thus free Louise of her sickness. I believe this because the narrator has run away from Louise, as if the narrator is a part of Louise’s sickness (as if they are the rot). By leaving, the narrator either believes Louise will get healthier with Elgin or that Louise will get healthier without the narrator.

Further, the narrator believes that by sitting in that chair, they have “neither life nor hope” because “movement indicates life and life indicates hope,” and they refuse to move (107-108). This could emphasize the narrator’s dependency on Louise. They feel stagnant without her and thus lifeless and hopeless. Additionally, the narrator mentions the idea of death and dust and that “daily we breathe the dead” (108). The narrator believes it is better for them to become dust (death) since they are immobile and thus void of life and hope. I believe the latter quotation goes beyond the actual aspect of breathing in dust. In class, we spoke of how our experiences are written on our body; and how that could be a possible meaning of Winterson’s writing. Since breathing is a function of the body, “daily we breathe the dead” could have a similar meaning (108). The dead are always with us; they are in our memories and written on our bodies. Breathing is essential to life (the antithesis of death), and as long as we are breathing, we will always have our pasts and remember those who have died.