In Written on the Body, time is nonlinear and unstable. Rather than adhere to a predictable framework of time, the narrator shifts from moment to moment with only the barest hints of an ordered chronology. This ambiguous timeline is contrived in order to force the reader to experience time in the same no normative manner as the narrator. The narrator experience what Judith Halberstan refers to as Queer time. The narrator flits through the moments of their life in pursuit of love, however any love they find is doomed. Most of their relationships are begun with the understanding that they are temporary and certainly deviate from normal behavior. The narrator speaks of love, but not of family or aging. At the same time they obsess over black holes and, after learning of Louise’s sickness, the slow wasting of diseased flesh towards death and decay. But, for the narrator, that is the basic rule of essence. To the narrator, “time always ends” (Winterson 18).
Even if the narrator accepts the dream of a “saggy armchair of clichés” (10), they do not have a form that would fit in normative time. As obsessed as the narrator might be with bodies, their own body is formless. Without the markings of gender or sexuality, they cannot slip into this normalized time. Just as the narrator seems to exist in an ambiguous moment, or string of moments, in time, they also inhabit an ambiguous space. Unable to slip into a more traditional lifestyle, the narrator could even inhabit their own “time without end”(18), at least for a moment.
2 thoughts on “Ambiguous Time and Form”
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“the narrator flits through moments in their life in pursuit of love”. This is so beautifully written and describes perfectly the patterns of the narrator. Those who can fly, often never stay in one place for long, even with a destination that they want to reach.
I never thought about the absence of aging that the narrator never addresses. There is life with love and then without Louise, death and then dehumanizing of her body to the cellular level so that narrator can cope with the reality of the situation. The moments without end that the narrator creates, are the moments that get the narrator to and from their next destination.
I enjoyed reading your post, it was interesting to think about how the narrator jumped around to let the reader experience a no normative manner. In another blog post it talks about how their past sexual acts are marks and lines that are written on their body, and Louise them to come to her as new. You believe that the body is formless and that is what I also believed, but after reading the other blog post it made me think that their body is made up of all his past sexual acts and gave them some kind of form for me.