In the book Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson, the narrator starts out by saying, “Why is the measure of love loss” (10)? I find this, a great hook because the word “measure” is something I rarely associate with love. I don’t think of love as having measures or greatness or tiny portions that are possible. Measures are for music and food. However, this led me to think this sentence means that the biggest loves are the biggest losses such as the great Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. That was a great love and it came with the biggest loss: death.
In addition, it might be far off but the quote could also mean that no matter how much one loves there will always be loss. Love is vulnerable. Loving someone fully and allowing them to love you requires one to reveal whom one truly is and by doing this, one guards must come down. One can love as a friend, peer, professor, or lover and in each case the fear of reciprocation is where the loss may come.
I think by starting with this sentence in the beginning of the novel sets up the book to talk about love in the perspective of an unhappy ending. Love is complicated and messy and comes with limits and restrictions. This novel explores these restrictions through the narrator’s perspective of being in relationships with multiple different girls. Time, distance, traits, marriage all cause separation and walls from living happily ever after. By being unable to find “the one” to settle down with and that makes the narrator truly happy, develops this theme of loss and explores the possibilities of what makes all these different losses possible. I think the narrator is trying to say that love is not possible without loss.