The closest thing that Jeanette Winterson’s narrator of Written on the Body achieves to marriage prior to their relationship with Louise is their relationship with Jaqueline. But, that relationship is destroyed by the narrator’s lust and love for Louise, quickly, sharply, hurtfully. It was a settled relationship, content and calm, and not enough for our narrator:
“Jaqueline was an overcoat. She muffled my senses. With her I forgot about feeling and wallowed in contentment. Contentment is a feeling you say? Are you sure it’s not an absence of feeling?… Contentment is a positive side of resignation. It has its appeal but it’s no good wearing an overcoat and furry slippers and heavy gloves when what the body really wants is to be naked” (76).
They “wallowed in contentment” — interesting choice of words to put together (76). They contradict each other in meaning, or rather in the way people usually tend to use and think of these words. Wallowing has connotations of almost trudging or floating around in a state of sadness, boredom, self pity, maybe a combination of all. Contentment, on the other hand, is most often positive: it’s a happy feeling, a feeling that’s arguably something everybody searches for and wants: satisfaction in the state of homeostasis, of balance. But our narrator is not happy in contentment. In fact, for them contentment is an “absence of feeling” and part of the same feeling as “resignation” (76). Balance, quiet, consistency, even, is a resignation for them. Resignation from what? From desire, life, or real love? Just pure lust?
Why would you want to be wearing an overcoat when “what the body really wants is to be naked” (76)? But perhaps contentment becomes a feeling when it is with someone whose body wants to be naked with your naked body, and not smothered in overcoats. When it comes to Louise, all the narrator wants is a life with her; with her, contentment perhaps would be real contentment and not a resignation because Louise is not Jaqueline. But then again, how would we as readers know that the narrator doesn’t have this euphoric state in every relationship prior — they are unreliable, after all. By condemning contentment as a lack of feeling, the narrator contradicts themselves as they desperately seek out Louise as a partner, and when or if they receive that partnership and love, then wouldn’t that be contentment?
This is a great post! Now that we have finished the novel, I wonder what you make of the ending. Toward the end of the text, the narrator extols the virtues of “walking in the snow in a warm coat” (Winterson 181). After all, “[w]ho wants to walk in the snow naked?” (181) This new perspective seems to blatantly contradict the narrator’s earlier assertion that “the body really wants…to be naked” (76). Do you think the narrator has changed their opinion on monogamy? Or, rather, do you think Louise is merely an exception to the narrator’s usual way of life?
I really enjoyed your perspective on this passage. It reminded me of the first few pages of the novel, in which the narrator criticizes the conventions of heteronormative society. When reading the narrator of Written on the Body as queer, one may turn to “The Trouble with Normal,” a work which premises itself on delineating a fundamental line of difference between heteronormative values and the values of the queer community for numerous reasons. For the narrator, what does it mean to toe this line between societal notions of “contentment” and a queer intimacy unaccounted for in such a philosophy?