“I realized I was meant to be clapping in time with the beat and I remembered another piece of advice from my grandmother. ‘When in the jungle you howl with the wolves.’ I slapped a plastic grin on my face like a server at McDonald’s and pretended to be having a good time” (153)
The repetitive phrasing in this passage clearly stresses a moment of impact for the narrator. By emphasizing “I realized…I remembered… I slapped” the narrator transitions the audience through a period of self-realization that culminates in a moment of sharp pain. This pain takes the metaphorical form of a false identity where discomfort gets masked by a “plastic” smile. To use the word plastic is to suggest the most synthetic, artificial form of contentment. The narrator exposes additional paradoxes by contrasting “clapping in time” and “howling in the wild”. To clap in time is an organized motion typically done in establishments of civility. This passage demonstrates irony when the narrator cannot genuinely follow through on this motion while in the utmost pillar of civil integrity, a church. Instead, they feel as though they are among a foreign species, forced to assimilate like a lone wolf approaching a pack.
Up to this point, the narrator has been seen existing in a unique environment that is isolated from common laws of morality. They engage in sexual relations with married women and partners of both gender. In this passage, a church outing that has been normalized for stereotypical, heterosexual Caucasians is turned into a jungle of uncertainty.
The overwhelming presence of homogenized expectations in this passage are very similar to the Christmas Effects in Sedgwick’s article. In society, the mixture of church, state, and commercial industry leads to an atmosphere of isolation for those who fall outside of society’s predetermined categories. When the narrator attends church, a supposed sanctuary for outcasts, they are swept up in unfamiliarity and discomfort. This paradox speaks volumes to the novel’s intended message. Nonconforming identities, behaviors, and sexual preferences are normative for the people who live them. Society takes those who do not align with man-made constructions of normality and makes them feel as though they are lost in a jungle, scrambling to blend with the rest of the pack. By writing this novel, Jeanette Winterson fights this battle. Not all identities are defined, not all relationships are monogamous, and not all love is clean cut.
I really like your connection to the Sedgwick piece, and I agree with your point that Written on the Body shows that non-normative identities, behaviors, and sexual preferences are normative in the context of individuals’ lives. Your analysis makes see the narrator’s relationship with Gail in a different light. Gail does not impose normative judgements on the narrator’s choices, but rather offers them the most honest advice that the narrator receives in the entire novel: “You made a mistake” (158). I think that Gail’s genuine attempt to help the narrator recognize the flaws in their own perception supports your point that the novel defies classifying certain behaviors as normative.
I did not look into the discord in the church carefully until you examined the scene on a closer view. Your description of the church as both a center of civility to the normal and a jungle of uncertainty to the outcasts is interesting and revealing. Messiness I felt while reading this book may be because, as you said, it is the author’s way of fighting battles against the normality; to present as many possible forms of outcasts as the author can by leaving characters and relationships ambiguous, and to show the ‘jungle’ side of the normal world.