Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body is saturated with longing. On page 135, the narrator calculates how long it would take the sound waves of their screams to reach Louise; of course, it would be futile. They simply cannot scream loud enough, it is impossible. This metaphor is so human– that urge to scream out in times of great loss, even if you will not be heard. The rest of page 135 speaks to the novel’s broader contemplation of belonging and estrangement. The following paragraph describes the zoo at night—animals crying out, “species separated from one another, knowing instinctively the map of belonging.” This ties into the novel’s queerness, where the narrator’s love for Louise defies rigid categorization. The “map of belonging” is dictated not by conventional social norms, but by love, or at least connection. Just as the animals in the zoo are unable to access their natural habitat, the narrator finds themselves cut off from the one place they belong: with Louise. “I keen in the fields to the moon. Animals will call back,” demonstrates the narrator’s desperation, their attempts to reach out even when no response will come. This passage builds on earlier moments in the novel where the narrator struggles with love as something ineffable. The passage’s closing image—the animals, ears pricked, listening for “the noises of kill” but only hearing human sounds—further deepens the novel’s sense of displacement. If Louise is the animal, she is one separated from her natural environment, removed from the one she loves (at least from the narrators POV). If the narrator is the animal, then they are imprisoned by their own yearning. In this way, this passage encapsulates the novel’s central paradox: love is both the most natural and the most unnatural thing, something instinctive yet impossible to hold onto. The page ends with, “I wish I could hear your voice again.” So gut-wrenching.
2 thoughts on “Map of Belonging”
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I love this, especially your inclusion of the different types of sounds that are used to depict different types of pain –the narrator’s screaming for Louise, the animals crying out, etc. I want to connect this aspect of your post to a text I’ve read outside of this class. The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry posits that pain cannot be truly expressed linguistically: “Pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned” (4). I feel that this quote deeply demonstrates the narrator’s navigation of Louise’s absence: the desire to cry out for her, and deep isolation/stillness in silence; I think there is also something to be said about how the narrator cannot possibly scream loud enough to convey their pain to Louise, because the sound would be swallowed before it reaches her.
This is so interesting! I love the way you are thinking about animals and the narrator’s relationships through this passage and image of the zoo. I thought that your connecting element of sound throughout the page is great close reading. I think that you noticed an interesting connection between the zoo animals and the narrator and Louise, and I like your reading of being caged away from your natural environment and imprisonment as applied to love and the relationship that Louise and the narrator cannot have. I was also thinking a little bit about how that can connect to the entire theme of infidelity and queerness and how those intersect. The zoo animals as an image, for example, of how queerness is acceptable and “normalized” and at the same time not quite. The animals are supposedly happy in the zoo, provided they have a big territory that resembles their natural habitat. And yet, it’s still restricted, sort of captivity.