“Cheating is easy. There’s no swank to infidelity. 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 taking but when you open them there’s nothing there.” (p. 77)
“The most reliable Securicor, church sanctioned and state approved, is marriage. Swear you’ll cleave only unto him or her and magically that’s what will happen. Adultery is as much about disillusionment as it is about sex. The charm didn’t work. You paid all that money, ate the cake and it didn’t work. It’s not your fault is it? Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire.” (one paragraph later, p. 78)
These musings from Written on the Body’s narrator follow their train of thought after Jacqueline has just learned of their infidelity. The narrator has been swept up into a self-admittedly familiar haze – the first few months spent teetering on the edge of an illicit tryst, then finally falling into a full-on affair. From what has been established so far, the narrator is very used to being an affair partner, but not so much being the one actively cheating. Still, it’s possible to surmise that rationalizations their partners have given in the past have informed the narrator’s justifications. My first quote emphasizes how effortless it was for the narrator to become entangled with Louise. They express that it’s “easy” to get into a rhythm of taking increasingly more from the trust built up in an established relationship. I would assume that since the narrator elected to get into a relationship with a woman they found entirely bland, they had even fewer qualms this time than they would have otherwise. There are no considerations of how Jacqueline might feel when she discovers that what she thought was a mutually-loving relationship was actually abandoned long ago by her partner. The only hint of hesitance in this first quote appears in the last sentence, when the narrator extends their metaphor to imply that they should have gathered something meaningful from “all that taking”, but instead they end up bereft of any substantive relationship. Interestingly, though, this does still frame things in a way that makes the narrator the main victim – they’re the one that’s been left high and dry. Pay no attention to the partner whose trust has been violated.
The second quote holds a much more by-the-book justification for cheating. The narrator voices the argument of placing all responsibility for maintaining an infidelity-free marriage onto the state-sponsored institution, not on the people involved. There is no discussion here of incremental choices made on the part of the would-be cheater, so no accountability can be requested of them. Elsewhere in the story, the narrator considers how fantasizing about cheating does end up damaging a relationship even though it seems like a too-strict boundary to uphold. They conceptualize it as having given a portion of their heart away, even as they still lie in bed beside the person they’ve pledged themself to. If they decide to continue going down that path instead of addressing the issue, communicating with their partner, and either deciding to recommit themself or break off the relationship, then emotional cheating can steal the passion and trust from a relationship just as much as physical cheating can. In this selected quote, though, the narrator places the blame for cheating onto the cultural conceptualization of marriage as a “magical charm.” Once someone discovers that it’s not that, and that people within monogamous relationships – even legally-married ones, gasp – are still capable of experiencing desire for people outside their relationship, they can’t be faulted for becoming disillusioned with the whole thing and drifting toward the next person/people they desire instead.
The last sentence especially makes this viewpoint clear: “Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire.” Sure, if you’re viewing it as a spell that prevents you from ever experiencing attraction ever again, then yes, marriage as a construct will not prevent that from happening. Conscious choices to continue nourishing your relationship, and still experiencing attraction but making the decision to stay with the person(s) you love and have decided to be loyal to, are important. If you are so tempted to be in a relationship with someone else that you’re already halfway out the door either emotionally or physically, then ending your current relationship first would seem to be the more moral thing to do instead of hurting the person(s) you’re with. Mutual decisions to keep choosing your partner(s) instead of other people are what sustains the trust of a relationship, not a legal document. The narrator undercuts this specific argument about marriage in the next paragraph, but – importantly – allows this same argument about disillusionment to justify their cheating on Jacqueline. People don’t just fall magically into cheating; lots of tiny decisions are made along the way to get to that point. However, people invested in preconceived romantic ideas of following their hearts outside a relationship they made the choice to commit to, or people who would rather just wash their hands of any responsibility to not damage the trust of their partner(s), would follow the same line of reasoning that the narrator’s currently allowing themself to follow.
I really loved reading this post! I think the theme of infidelity is one of the most interesting things explored in the novel. In my blog post I wrote about a passage that made me think that cheating is an act the narrator is addicted to, which I can see in these passages as well.
I really like the way you wrote about marriage.
I was also struck by the idea of marriage as a tool against attraction to other people. It makes me think of in class how we discussed the concept of the narrator needing to be “fixed.” Whether that’s by Louise, or by their actions.
One thing I didn’t notice before reading this post was how the narrator was typically an affair partner and not the one cheating themself, I think that also fits with my idea about them being addicted to cheating. Thank you for sharing!
This is such a compelling analysis! You do a fantastic job unpacking the narrator’s shifting justifications and exposing how their perspective on cheating is steeped in self-serving rationalizations. This matters because it highlights how the narrator evades accountability, framing infidelity as an inevitable consequence of desire rather than a series of choices. By blaming societal constructs like marriage instead of their own actions, they avoid confronting their role in Jacqueline’s pain. This passage ultimately challenges readers to question whether the commitment is truly about external constraints or the personal integrity of those involved.
I really love your analysis of this passage! I think the idea of relationships in general and infedelity is one of the most interesting things about this book.
“If you are so tempted to be in a relationship with someone else that you’re already halfway out the door either emotionally or physically, then ending your current relationship first would seem to be the more moral thing to do instead of hurting the person(s) you’re with”
I love this comment, especially when thinking about Elgin and their relationship/arrangement with Louise and the narrator’s reaction to this. Specifically the scene where the narrator and Louise are intimate, but Elgin is in the house. He is upset the next morning and the narrator seems annoyed with him for interrupting their morning with Louise through their description of the moment. It seems that all of them would be less hurt emotionally if they just talked about their desires and left the relationships that weren’t suiting them. That would be the morally correct thing to do. Great post!