“You were driving but I was lost in my own navigation” (Winterson, 17).
We see a continuous crumbling structure of love woven within this novel. This idea of being within ones “own navigation” comes from the narrator’s overt fixation of love and lust but not knowing how to hold on to that, maybe even choosing the wrong lovers. The language used is clear and concise in its metaphorical usage, the idea of being in a relationship and progressing together within a relationship. The idea of the narrator’s “own navigation” cements the idea of the narrator’s lost infatuation with their love.
Understanding this passage, means understanding a lot of this novel thus far. The narrator falls in and out of love with married women and single women. It’s as though the narrator gets the same unfulfilling result, being on someone else’s navigation. The narrator is on this high, and it is not until they hit reality that they realize this relationship is only a façade. The lover’s however, aren’t always “driving” the relationship, and in many ways the narrator is driving, and they’re trying to navigate their journey with the narrator only to realize that love is not being reciprocated.
I think, though, that the narrator wants readers to feel compassion and empathy for themselves. We, as readers, see the unsteadiness of the relationships, however our sympathy should not be towards the narrator, it should be more towards the lovers. The narrator is manipulating us. The narrator’s captivation and undeniable love for a companion is not valid because the narrator is deteriorating. Deteriorating because one relationship ends as the other begins, never cementing in an ending.