“You don’t get over it because “it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it.” (Winterson, 155).
At this point in the novel the narrator has constantly reflected on death, and of those who die, and if they will ever find peace in a world that is so big. After the narrator left Louise, because they thought it would be the best choice for their relationship, we see the narrator deteriorating line after line. It is not until the end of the novel, when the narrator, after a journey of searching for Louise, sees her appear in the doorway their flat, in what seems to be emaciated state. At that point, a “new” beginning becomes the ending.
The narrator has inflicted herself with pain. The narrator has become accustomed to being in control, but death has taken hold of the hierarchal power structure of the narrator, turning it inside out, and has forced the narrator to introspect. Introspective insofar as to mean that the person the narrator loves, has left,. This void that “no-one else can fit,” is being filled with remorse and penance. The narrator mentioning of “new people” is the affirmation of the past relationships, the past feasible “lovers,” but “the gap” that never closed. The acceptance that although Louise is the one the narrator loves, it is the pain from the past clustering in the present, which now coexists. The narrator’s language is of anguish and calamity, that echo’s the precariousness of this novel. Pain, gap, death, grieve, hole, stops, never closes––words that are dispersed through this novel that are dreary and are always in and out of the narrator’s thoughts and feelings. It is as though once things are settled, the narrator shifts the gears of her emotions and deviates from the scene, causing everything that we the reader thought we knew, into more pandemonium.
This continual berating of the narrator, and these somewhat sympathizing lines, makes me fall back into the trap of liking the complex narrator. The narrator’s love for Louise is real; I truly believe that no one else can fill the narrator’s emptiness except for Louise. It is not that the narrator wants sympathy for them, it’s that she wants us to conceptualize the complexities of love, the complexities of people, and the unsteadiness of life. Love is fickle, it is pain.
I like the interoperation that you have from this quote. I thought that it was great when you said, “…it is the pain from the past clustering in the present…”. I think this relates to the whole novel since throughout the book the narrator is constantly bringing up her old relationships and dwelling on all the mistakes that happened. The narrator tries to make new relationships but still has old habits. I agree that the narrator is “dreary” and it seems to me that the narrator makes relationships more difficult than they need to be.
This quote was also a turning point for my feelings toward the narrator. I found your analysis of the macabre diction that is used to represent such unbearable pain in this passage to be really powerful. Your analysis of the narrator’s steep deterioration reminded me of another passage that confronts the purpose of grappling with life, “What is the point of movement when movement indicates life and life indicates hope”(107). I found it interesting that your analysis of one passage holds true throughout differing parts of the novel.