Category: 2014 Blog Post

The Story

“This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in this room” (p 190)

I find this passage unusual because it starts out by saying this is where the story began but everything in the description is bleak and it does not remind the reader of the beginning of the story, hence why it is at the end of the story. The words used suggest positivity such as sun, stretch, world, moon and stars. All of these things are trapped though inside this room. The narrator can reach them all which means they are all within their grasp but for some reason he/she can not touch them. I found it very interesting the line, “the walls are exploding” because it truly depicts what the message is. Life is crumbling around and all of these important items are stuck here and can not be free, the narrator’s soul can not be free.

This passage shows the body as something that almost lacks power because the narrator seems to be stuck. He/she has everything here in this room but it is not enough. The word threadbare conveys the true message, that the things the narrator once had are wearing thin, the narrator is wearing thin because he/she has been worn down from this experience. To stretch your hand out and reach the world is different then saying touch. The narrator is using reach because it is within he/she grasp, but he/she does not actually have it. The feelings, the sensation, everything is gone and the room is a reminder of that. All of these thoughts and feelings are bouncing around the room and can not break free and now never will because the narrator has seen the corners of the world but does not have them. It is from these very windows that the narrator will look out and watch how others will find what he/she is now missing.

Wasting Time with Love

“Why is the measure of love loss?” (9/39). Repeatedly asks the narrator of Jeanette Winterson’s novel Written on the Body. Perhaps it is because we cannot quantify love. We cannot compare it to any love that has ever been written or even felt. And more notably, we cannot measure love by a number of months or even years because time does not solidify love. We see the theme of time presented throughout this novel due to narrator’s pessimistic view of love. After the narrator ends eir affair with Jacqueline, ey relates this ended relationship to wasted time. “I haven’t stretched out my hand to check the clock and felt the cold weight of those lost hours ticking in my stomach.” (71). Why is the narrator obsessed with the idea that love is like a ticking time bomb?

I have little sympathy for the narrator, who often goes after women who are already involved in committed relationships. The narrator has built this idea that love cannot last because he/she has never experienced a timeless love. The narrator must put a limit, an expiration date, on his/her relationships. I too, as any human, have built walls to protect myself – to be able to not have expectations, because no one likes to admit that they have been hurt. This wall is built for the narrator by an end date. The narrator compares wasted time eloquently to a cold weight, which is a recognizable feeling for most.

Prior to the ended romance with Jacqueline, the narrator begins to fall for Louise, but this feeling is different. “What are you that makes me feel thus? Who are you for whom time has no meaning?” (51). The narrator does not feel compelled to relate this tender relationship to time. Perhaps Louise will be the one to break em from this cycle and allow him to return his watch to his wrist.

Wardrobe Malfunction

“Jaqueline was an overcoat. She muffled my senses. With her I forgot about feeling and wallowed in contentment. Contentment is a feeling you say? Are you sure it’s not an absence of feeling? I liken it to that particular numbness one gets after a visit to the dentist. Not in pain nor out of it, slightly drugged. Contentment is the positive side of resignation. It has its appeal but it’s no good at wearing an overcoat and furry slippers and heavy gloves when what the body really wants is to be naked.” (76)

What really intrigued me about this passage is that it begins with the use of clothing to cover the narrator’s body, and ends with the narrator expressing ze only wants to be naked. It was also interesting to read the narrator’s take on ze’s relationship with Jaqueline, which was contentment, and ze’s explanation of contentment.

The narrator believes that ze has no special connection to Jaqueline. Ze felt contentment, which ze says is an absence of feeling, but nothing more. One can even say that ze did not even like Jaqueline, as ze likened their relationship to a trip to the dentist, and nobody enjoys a trip to the dentist and the pain that comes with it. Ze felt nothing, just numbness, a drugged state of being. While reading this I became extremely angry with the narrator. Why would ze waste Jaqueline’s time and lead her on like this? Ze obviously wanted to be rid of Jaqueline, yet continued to keep her around until she found something better (Louise), and then Z ditched Jaqueline the moment Louise expressed interest in the narrator.

The comparison of Jaqueline to heavy clothing is really interesting. Ze wants to be rid of the heavy clothing (Jaqueline) that the narrator thinks is suffocating. Yet again I asked myself the question, “Why did ze keep Jaqueline around for such a long period of time, if ze just wanted to be free?”Although there is no clear answer, I thought that perhaps it is because no matter what gender or who ze is, ze has the same humanly desires that we all do. I turned to Micheal Warner’s “Trouble with Normal,” which talks a bit about humanely desires. Everyone has sexual and human desires, no matter their sexual orientation. The sexual desires may all not be uniform, but on some level everyone has them (3-6). It is common thought that everyone has the humanely desire for someone to love and protect them. I began to think that perhaps Jaqueline is ze’s “safety blanket” (or clothing) that protected ze. Ze may claim that ze wanted to be naked, or free from Jaqueline, when truly ze wanted the warmth of clothing (a person) around ze, no matter what (who) the clothing was. Ze wanted the warmth of a companion, no matter whom that person was. But then, the new “line of clothing” (Louise) was released, and the narrator decided to upgrade ze’s wardrobe. This comparison shows that to ze, relationships are disposable, just as clothes are.

Peaceful Destruction

Sharp points of desire were still there but there was too a sleepy safe rest like being in a boat I had as a child. She rocked me against her, sea-calm, sea under a clear sky, a glass-bottomed boat and nothing to fear.” (80)

The sea holds a metaphor for tranquility and bliss. Contrastingly, “sharp points,” and “glass-bottomed boat,” allude to destruction of some sort. In a glass-bottomed boat, nothing is for certain. A casual brush against a coral reef or rock will shatter the bottom, and the boat will most certainly sink. The narrator erects this idea of a glass-bottomed boat, but quickly follows it up by saying that ze has nothing to fear, because Louise is with zir.

The paragraph that follows the above passage ends with two important sentences: “The sea is a means not an end. They trust it in spite of the signs.” Despite the overwhelming vastness of the ocean and the immense power that it has to destroy things, it must be trusted. But how does this make sense? How can one trust something, when they are aware of the damage that it can cause? While I do not have a definitive answer to this question, I assume that many would answer that question with one word: “Love.” Love is the reason for people’s outlandish actions, and it is the driving force behind much bravery. For instance, the narrator’s “glass-bottomed boat and nothing to fear” reference.

I found this to be comparable to Halberstam’s “Queer Time” in a unique way. As we discussed in class, those who do not live in “queer time,” are oftentimes confused and sometimes offended, by the way that others live their lives (ties in with Warner as well). With that being said, those who are in queer time, are not affected positively or negatively because it is normal for them. In other words, although being “queer” is often put under scrutiny by those with closed minds, and people undergo unfair ridicule for their sexual preference, perhaps the quest for love makes it worthwhile and evokes a sense of fearlessness.

Growing Up is Hard to Do

Sex can feel like love or maybe it’s guilt that makes me call sex love. I’ve been through so much I should know just what it is I’m doing with Louise. I should be a grown up by now. Why do I feel like a convent virgin? (94)

The narrator of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body is waiting for his/her married lover Louise to make a decision on how to proceed with their relationship. Louise’s husband Elgin is aware of their affair, yet they remain married. However, all three of them have come to realize that something needs to change and the narrator is waiting for Louise to choose between her marriage and her affair.

The narrator is wondering if the love Louise has said she has for him/her is truly love and not just an illusion created by sex. By saying that guilt may make sex feel like love, the narrator is suggesting that we like to hide behind love. We are afraid of the shame we might encounter if we have sex for nothing but pleasure. As Michael Warner points out in his book The Trouble with Normal, we are constantly looking for a way to handle our sexual shame, to get rid of it. We want to “pin it on someone else” (Warner, 3), or in this case something else. If we say we love someone, our sexual shame is automatically reduced because it is far more ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ within our society to have sex with someone you love than having sex for your own pleasure.

Even though the reader still doesn’t know if the narrator is male or female, he/she clearly lives on, as Judith Halberstam would put it, ‘Queer Time’. Indulging in numerous relationships with (married) partners of both sexes, not settling down, and clearly challenging “conventional forms of association, belonging, and identification” (Halberstam, 4), the narrator does not follow the traditional life span of school, marriage, kids, a steady job, and retirement. Instead, the narrator realizes himself/herself that he/she is not yet a grown up, does not fit the norm. He/she is aware that society expects him/her to end the affair; that he/she should know what ‘is right’ by looking at his/her life and the mistakes made, the lessons learned. Nevertheless, the narrator feels like a ‘convent virgin’: childlike, innocent, and clueless.

Although the narrator at one point believes that Louise will not, under any circumstances, choose to end her marriage, the comparison to feeling like a convent virgin furthermore suggests the narrator’s hope and faith that their love will prevail against all odds, against the norm, and against his/her fears. It shows the narrator’s hope that not following the norm will pay off in the end and lead to happiness.

 

Changes in Lust or Love

“You don’t lose your lust at the rate you lose your looks. Its a cruel fact of nature. you go on fancying it just the same. And thats hard” (149)

At the time that this quotation is said by Gail to the narrator caught my attention because currently there is something happening between the speaker and Gail. There seems to be a different type of relationship forming between the two. Gail is seemingly nursing the narrator back to health mentally. She is making statements generally saying get over Louise. This quotation is interesting because with all the help the narrator has received, Louise is still the main issue in zes mind. The statement itself that “you don’t lose your lust at the rate you lose your looks” is the exact feeling the narrator is going through. Although Louise is many miles away in Switzerland after receiving treatment for cancer, there is still an obsession being clung to. When told that Louise has beat the cancer and is in remission, the reader can feel the sense of relief felt by the narrator. This reiterates the fact that although the narrator claims to not want to see Louise, ze is still in fact in love with her, and it is very hard to go through. “Fancying” her from this great distance is all that the speaker has left to hold onto as of now. The readers are told early on in the back that Louise does not have the same feelings that the speaker does. It is a form of unrequited love. Gail’s words above hit that idea on the head, stressing that holding these strong feelings for a person when they do not return them in the same capacity is very difficult to live through, especially as your lust for that person are growing consistently.

The narrator and author spend multiple pages discussing how love for Louise encompasses the speakers whole being, that the love the speaker has for Louise is literally described on all parts of her body, from her skin to her bones, to her ears etc. The article written by Halberstam states that “different histories touch or bush up against each other, ceasing temporal havoc in the key of desire” (3). This relates directly because through the speakers love and lust for Louise it is causing the body true havoc because of this intense sensation of want and need.

Born to Die

What is the point of movement when movement indicates life and life indicates hope?  I have neither life nor hope.  Better than to fall in with the crumbling wainscot, to settle with the dust and be drawn up into someone’s nostrils.  Daily we breathe the dead” (108)

Perhaps the most obvious syntactical choice in this passage is the structure of the first sentence.  The “x begets y begets z” form instantly implies unflagging forward motion. Word choices such as “fall” and “drawn up” conjure the idea of a cycle, and the narrator’s repetition of words such as “life” and “dead” lead me to believe that ze is referring to the circle of life.  To live, we must breathe.  However, the narrator makes the point that the air we breathe, the key to life as many would argue, consists of the dead.  That image in and of itself it wonderfully poetic.

While my explication of the passage could end there, with that dark yet beautiful image, I think that it connects really well to Judith Halberstam’s piece called “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies.”  Halberstam introduces to us the idea of “queer time” (1).  The heteronormative timeline is generally considered to play out as follows: birth, school, job, spouse, kids, retirement, and finally death.  However, Halberstam poses the idea of “queer time” that breaks this timeline, as it focuses on “other logics of location, movement, and identification” rather than “reproduction” (1).  The narrator actually addresses this idea in a passage soon after the one I chose to analyze, listing the “characteristics of living things” that she was taught in school.  In fact, ze goes on to say, “I don’t want to reproduce, I want to make something entirely new” (108).

Halberstam’s idea of “queer time” allows us to eliminate reproduction from the list of “characteristics of living things” that exacerbate the narrator (108).  In fact, of all the aspects of life that “queer time” allows us to move around or eliminate, birth and death are the only two constants.  We will all be born, and our lives will all push forward until we die, our dust mixing into the atmosphere to sustain the new life to come.  Beyond that, it is fair to say that nothing else is constant.  We our slaves to our own desires, but our own desires are just that; our own.  Just as desires vary from person to person, so should the characteristics and timelines of our lives.   Perhaps if the narrator was able to read some of Halberstam’s work, ze would struggle less with how zir own wants and desires don’t fit into the supposed timeline we’re all supposed to follow.

Hero without a cause

“Honey, if there is one thing I can’t stand it’s a hero without a cause. People like that just make trouble so that they can solve it” (159)

This passage struck me as unusual because those words are coming from an intoxicated woman who could barely capable of forming complete sentences. I think this quote is very important because even under the influence Gail could see right through the mistake that Z made. I think this passage is about confronting and the fact that he/she has commitment issues. Z claims to have loved Louise but as soon he saw their relationship getting difficult he/she took that as hi/her opportunity to flee. Z is trying to convince him/herself that he/she did Louise a favor but really all Z did was leave Louis at a time when she needed him/her the most. The quote is saying that people like Z often look for the easy way out difficult situations and try to mask their acts of coward as being heroes or people who are trying to help. I think “People like that just make trouble so that they can solve it” is such an important piece of that statement because a few page ahead you can see that Z is constantly trying to get in touch with Elgin to check on Louise, almost trying to be her hero in disguise. Z likes to believe he/she has the power to still be relevant in Louise’s life but what Z doesn’t realize is he/she gave that right up the moment he/she left to fight her battle of cancer with a man she has no desire in loving. Although Z is no longer in Louise’s life he is still trying to solve the trouble he made. This passage is asking us to look at time as more of a essence. In this passage timing is everything. From the time the narrator agreed to accompany Gail to dinner after work lead up to Gail subconsciously calling Z out for his wrong doings to Louise.

sHE…

I had a boyfriend once, his name was Bruno…he found Jesus under a wardrobe… rescued by the fire brigade…Jesus had come out of the closet to save him. ‘Out of the closet and up into your heart,’ raved the Pastor (152)

The word “boyfriend” captured my attention immediately. I have been so caught up in finding the narrators gender and the gender he/she prefers, and this passage may have solidified my opinion.

For some reason I am seeing Jesus as the narrator himself/herself, slyly talking in first-person. He/she is seemingly stuck under a wardrobe and even hidden in the “closet.” Then, there is a “rescue.” A rescue from himself/herself. A rescue from his/her own sexuality. 

Sexuality is something that can either set you free or suck you in. This passage is the moment of freedom for the Narrator. I find it ever so intriguing that there is two terms that suggest suppression of the Narrator’s true self, and that is the use of the words “[rescue]” and “save.” The imagery used to capture the meaning, feeling and reality of ‘coming out of the closet’ is magnificent, while answering a very frustrating, reoccurring question: what is the gender of the narrator?

Though, the use of Jesus in this passage is so cliché, it ties the fact that ‘God knows everything you do and you do not’ into the plot of the novel. I proposed earlier that the Narrator is using Jesus as a double of himself/herself; he/she “had a boyfriend once” and he/she seemingly came “out of the closet.” I believe he/she is, in fact, a he.

Suppression is prevalent in this passage. Suppression of the gay community. In this instance, he needs to be saved from his sexuality and rescued from his own mind just to find himself?? Ridiculous. He found refuge once the pastor “raved” the truth, “raved” reality and “raved” sanity, that there is nothing more real than what is within your heart and nothing more genuine than love. Once it is found, all bets are off, the “wardrobe” is off and the “closet” is gone. I believe that his passage has made him, himself all the way to the core of his heart, where Jesus is ringing bells of true identity.

One Last Act For The Dead

What would you do? Pass the body into the hands of strangers? The body that has lain beside you in sickness and in health. The body your arms till long for dead or not. You were intimate with every muscle,  privy to the eyelids moving in sleep. This is the body where your name is written, passing into the hands of strangers.

This passage is unusual because the narrator refers to Louise as “the body” because ze is in a cemetery and believes Louise to be dead and cannot bear to refer to Louise as a dead body yet. The narrator also speaks to the reader directly asking, “What would you do? Pass the body into the hands of strangers?” referring to the embalming process before burial and how people used to bury their dead themselves instead of passing them off. The narrator believes the past was more romantic, as a family would take care of their dead as an act of love before burial but now families don’t want to see the dead. Nowadays people fear death, and the narrator is no different, with the slight exception that ze fears more about Louise’s death than zir own. This fear translates into a desire to see Louise again, but ze fears it will only be at Louise’s funeral.

The narrator has also tried to block Louise from zir mind while living outside of London to reduce the pain caused by her diagnosis and imminent death. This is why ze cannot bring zirself to say “Louise’s body” and instead adopts a tone as if ze were addressing the reader and the body the reader longs for, not Louise. The narrator cannot admit that ze longs for Louise and her body nor does ze want to pass Louise off to strangers to prepare her for her death, which is exactly what ze does when ze allows Elgin to attempt to cure her. The narrator is beginning to regret zir decision to leave Louise and realizes that passing a loved one’s body to strangers removes the acts of love one does for the dead. The narrator is trying to reconcile this idea with zir thought processes about leaving Louise because up to now, the narrator truly believed ze had helped Louise by leaving her. In fact, the opposite is true, and the narrator now deeply regrets sending zir lover off to strangers when ze could have stayed with Louise and tried to cure her zirself.