Category: 2014 Blog Post

The Dangers of Love

Most ignore fear when they find themselves amidst a whirlwind romance, but the narrator of the novel, Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson has too much experience with the dangers involved with falling in love. ,”I had lately learned that another way of writing FALL IN LOVE is WALK THE PLANK. I was tired of balancing blindfold on a slender beam, one slip and into the unplumbed sea” (26). E uses the analogy of being crazy enough to become vulnerable to another person as a death sentence. The author uses these phrases, “fall in love” and “walk the plank” because they evoke opposing emotions to the reader. We are met with warmth, happiness, and partnership when we hear the term “fall in love” and then immediately distraught, dreaded, and fearful when upon encountering “walk the plank”. Later in the novel, the narrator decides to ignore this once looming idea of love and risk Em life, “I know exactly what’s happening and I know too that I am jumping out of this plane on my own free will. No, I don’t have a parachute, but worse, neither does Jacqueline” (39). Each of these quotes honors the narrator’s beliefs that love is dangerous, much like free falling, but narrator desires to take this leap because Em believes that Jacqueline is worth it.

We see in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s piece, Tendencies, the theme of death in love prevails as well. Sedgwick shocks us on page one, “Up to 30 percent of teen suicides are likely to be gay or lesbian; that a third of gay and lesbian teenagers say that they have attempted suicide” (1). This statistics, as opposed to the narrator’s comparison in Written on the body, are literal representations of gays and lesbians who feel  unable to express their love and encounter their own “walking of the plank”.

What is Love?

“Why is the measure of love loss?

–It hasn’t rained for 3 months. The trees are prospecting underground, sending reserves of roots into the dry ground, roots like razors to open any artery water-fat. The grapes have withered on the vine. What should be plump and firm, resisting the touch to give itself in the mouth is spongy and blistered. Not this year the pleasure of rolling blue grapes between finger and thumb juicing my palm with music. Even the wasps avoid the thin brown dribble. Even the wasps this year. It was not always so.” (p 9)

This quote really struck me when reading because it starts with such a huge question and then uses the example of grapes  on the vine, a noun that does not exactly scream out love to the reader. However, after looking at this quotation more in detail there are several aspects that I became aware of. There are a strong usage of binary words throughout, such as firm, withered, blistered, and dry. Another selection of words used throughout are spongy, plump, juicy, and dribble. These are the exact opposite of the previous group of words, perhaps to show how something that was not perceived as good or was even viewed as ugly can turn into the something beautiful and to the human soul that is delicious. Time can truly change everything, especially in matters of the heart. This passage exposes the reader to the idea of time effecting our bodies and identities; the body can wither and the identity can evolve. The author is asking us to question what are our conceptions of love and not view it as we always do, it should be seen for its possibilities not for its endings. There is a lot of nature imagery here such as roots, wasps, grapes, trees, water, vine and underground. Nature represents pure and untouched, just as the body. This ties into the use of body imagery such as mouth, finger, thumb, and palm.  I think this because of the opening line primarily, it sets the reader up to view the upcoming passage as loss but begs not to at the same time, you should look outside the box in terms of love. The author wants you to see that the ground, trees etc are at a loss because they are having a dry spell but actually it is the possibility of rain we should be focusing on instead. The phrase ‘even the wasps avoid’ is used to represent that even a creature that no one likes will not come close, representing that sometimes even those who you view below you can reject you.

I especially loved the message behind the quotation. It represents that there can be love and it can change into something else overtime but why view that as a loss? The passage says ‘it was not always so’ meaning that once there was love so there can be love again. The language shows that there stages we go through as humans, at one moment we can be rolling in the pleasures and in the next there might only be a ‘thin brown dribble’ left that we cling to because we are afraid of being alone. The rain will come again but the ground has to be patient, which makes the waiting even more enjoyable once it does arrive.

If this is love, then love is easy.. or is it not?

Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to each other is still the thing we long to hear? ‘I love you’ is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. (9)

I don’t like to think of myself as an insincere person but if I say I love you and I don’t mean it then what else am I? Will I cherish you, adore you, make way for you, make myself better for you, look at you and always see you, tell you the truth? And if love is not those things then what things? (11)

In both of these passages the unidentified narrator of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body asks one of the most vital questions of mankind (and the singer Haddaway): ‘What is love?’. He or she wonders why hearing somebody say ‘I love you’ is such an important thing for us and if it shouldn’t be more important how we convey our own personal notion of love.

Even though, as the narrator points out, the words are unoriginal and have been said many times before, we long to hear them and make a big deal out of them, almost worshiping them. They give us a feeling of security, security that our significant other can’t possible leave us, as he/she said those magical three words. Words that many might only say because they feel pressured into it. Pressured by society, their partner, friends, parents, etc. And haven’t they most likely said I love you to somebody else before? Haven’t they had relationships before that didn’t work out even though they assured themselves they loved each other over and over again?

The narrator realizes that we need to be sure to only say ‘I love you’ when we truly mean it and when we can support these words with our actions. Only then there is a slight chance that it is actually love. Because we can’t possibly ever know what love truly means, can we? Who knows if there isn’t always somebody out there who we would love ‘more’ if ever given the chance of meeting each other? And isn’t it the beauty of love that it feels different for each and every one of us and with every partner that we’re with? It evolves, grows and changes, with us. That is what makes everybody’s love special.

When wondering what love is, the narrator repeatedly uses the word ‘you’. He/she realizes that love is not about yourself but about the person you are with. There is no ‘I’ in love. Love should always be about the other person. It should never be about what you think the other person may want or need but about truly listening to them, hearing them, seeing them for who they are.

Looking back at his/her previous relationships the narrator makes a conscious decision not to say ‘I love you’ to his/her current partner Louise until he/she can be sure that it is really love. However, the question remains if the narrator will successfully follow his/her ideals until the end of story. In the end, love, with all its emotions, usually gets the better of us.

“…and they lived happily ever after”

“Odd that marriage, a public display and free to all, gives way to that most secret of liaisons, an adulterous affair.” (16).

In the civil and religious world, marriage is a binding contract. There is a certain image of the “perfect marriage” that society has indoctrinated us all with. Society dictates that marriage is between two people whom love each other and wish to spend the rest of their lives together, sharing every bit of themselves with one another, and  presenting a perfect image of themselves as a couple to all that look at their relationship. Society says this union is a partnership with no secrecy or issues. As we all know, this is never the case. This short but precise sentence eloquently expresses what I have thought about marriage for quite a while.

The use of punctuation in this passage is very telling of how the narrator feels about the “sanctity” of marriage. Every thought regarding marriage is separated by a comma. I took this to be that the narrator is pausing for the narrator to sigh in disgust. The narrator is fed up with the unholiness of the marriages the narrator has witnessed. The narrator has had many affairs with married women, and knows that those marriages are shams. The narrator knows that these woman stay in these marriages, although they wish to be with the narrator, in order to keep their societal image and acceptance. These commas are used to express and emphasize the disgust that the narrator feels towards those marriages that are just illusions for the public eye.

This passage also emphasizes that marriage, the perfect and ultimate union of two people, is not always what it seems. This also applies to the concept of the family unit. However, to fit in with society, most people want to have a perfect marriage and family to show off to the world.  This concept of the desire to have a perfect family unit is discussed in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s writing “Tendencies.” In her writing Sedgwick says

“Looking at my own life, I see that-probably like most people-I have valued and pursued these various elements of family identity to quite differing degrees….I see it’s been a ruling intuition for me that the most productive strategy (intellectually, emotionally) might be, whenever possible, to disarticulate them from one another, to disengage them-the bonds of blood, of law, of habitation, of privacy, of companionship and succor- from the lockstep of the unanimity in system called family.” (pg6).

The desire for a perfect familial image and identity begins with the foundation of a perfect marriage. Society tells us to strive for perfection and happiness, and a way to do that is to have a family. The pressure from society to maintain this image eventually leads to people being forced into lives they never wished for themselves.

Not Everyone is Interested in Love

“I considered her. I didn’t love her and I didn’t want to love her. I didn’t desire her and I could not imagine desiring her.” (26)

The narrators need to constantly remind that  “ I didn’t love her”, “I didn’t want to love her”, and, “I didn’t desire her” throughout the quote was something that I found very captivating. The repetitions in this passage made me question the narrator’s honesty. Repetition is interesting in way that it has the ability to form arrangements, which catches our attention creating comfort within our minds. If you repeat something several times a part of you will start to believe it, whether it is true or not. I questioned whether Z was trying to convince the audience or him/herself that he had no intentions of loving Jacqueline. I think that Z wanted to make sure that his/her point was made by letting us know that not only did he not love and desire her but he had no intention of loving nor desiring her. It is almost like he was refusing himself love.

I think this passage is about the way Z views relationships and how one should feel in relationship. The fact that Z can even say “I considered her” says a lot about how much he/she values relationships and the importance of a relationship and love. In this passage Z comes off as very selfish. Even though he/she does not love Jacqueline and has no intention on loving he/she still does not mind having her around. Z is selfish for not being honest with her. Instead of thinking about her feeling and needs as a person who also would like to be loved all he can offer her is being “considered”.  I think this passage is forcing us to look at love and in a more forced way.  Love in this passage is being looked at as unwanted where as I am so used to seeing love being an intangible thing that people yearn for. In this sense love is seen as being something to avoid. I also think that the author forces us to look at love as one sided. In this sense it is very clear that the narrator wants nothing to with love but the woman is the equation can possibly be yearning for love.

The Essence of Louise

 “Oh Louise, I’m not telling the truth. You aren’t threatening me, I’m threatening myself. My careful well-earned life means nothing. The clock was ticking. I thought, How long before the shouting starts? How long before the tears and accusations and the pain? That specific stone in the stomach pain when you lose something you haven’t got round to valuing? Why is the measure of love loss?” (39)

This quotation comes from the narrator of the book, in reference to the love the speaker holds for Louise, despite the fact that she is married to Jacqueline. In the page before this quotation, the speaker is describing eating lunch with Louise and he is aroused by everything she does, from chewing on a carrot, to chopping up a pear. I thought this was interesting because another one of my classes is discussing food and how it can be related to sexuality.

By using the method, the list of questions and question marks make this set of statements stand out in the book. It is clear that the narrator is in his/her own mind, questioning every thought which entered the mind. The narrator is trying to figure out why these feelings are arising and what to do with them now. The reader can tell that the speaker is feeling significant anxiety about how quickly feelings of love and happiness can turn to pain. Perhaps the speaker had significant pain in the last relationship, or perhaps this relationship is so different, because Louise is unavailable to the speaker, that being around her is torturous. Asking the questions listed in the passage about show the reader that there is an anticipation for an uneasy ending, yet the speaker doesn’t ask these questions aloud, rather they are the inner thought of the mind.

After the passage ends, the speaker continues to discuss the idea of jumping out of a plane without a parachute, a metaphor for possibly telling Louise of the desire for her, and possibly the question of will she leave Jacqueline. This makes it very clear to the reader that the narrator has become love sick over Louise and may possibly confront her and declare the love held for her. The questions asked are significant because they allow the reader access to the mind of the narrator and the struggles the narrator faces about having these feelings.

Precision

A precise emotion seeks a precise expression.  If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love?” (Winterson, 10)

This passage immediately drew me in, despite its brevity, because of the simple eloquence of its phrasing.  In a mere two sentences, the narrator turns the widely accepted idea of ‘love’ on its head, questioning how we define our feelings and what ‘love’ actually means.  The narrator poses an almost scientific theory, in the vein of Newton’s third law of motion (every action must have an equal and opposite reaction,) essentially stating that every precise emotion must be expressed through equal precision.  This opposition is itself then juxtaposed with the concept that if an emotion is not precise, it may not be expressed precisely.  In fact, the word “precise” is repeated three times, drawing special focus to the concept of precision and inviting the reader to question if it is possible define an emotion precisely in the first place. We all think we know what ‘love’ is, but if we were to ask everyone who is in ‘love’ to define what ‘love’ is, it is unlikely that we would end up with two identical definitions.  By that logic, if those feelings of affection most of us seem to experience are imprecise and individual-specific, should we even be allowed to define them as ‘love’?

I believe that Sedgwick’s idea of queer, “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning,” can help us cope with this issue (8).  Humans are pattern-seeking animals and therefore seek definitions, particularly for those things that scare or confuse us, such as imprecise emotions.  Labels and clichés make us feel safe, assuring us that we are not the only ones experiencing the perplexing emotions that we do when we say, fall in ‘love.’ However, perhaps we overuse these clichés, forcing ourselves to shave down our emotions into precise pegs that easily fit in the holes we’ve made for them.  We’ve streamlined ‘love,’ cutting out any room for the “…gaps, overlaps, dissonances…” that Sedgwick speaks of by “embracing one identity or one set of tastes as though they were universally shared, or should be” as Warner argues (Sedgwick, 8)(Warner, 1).  As a result, we invite shame into the equation and push it on those whose idea of ‘love’ is more of a square peg than a round one.  Perhaps if we were to utilize Sedgwick’s idea of queer as a precise expression of imprecise emotions, we would be more at ease (and therefore hopefully less condemnatory) with emotions that don’t identically match our own.

Have We Already Fallen?

“I had lately learned that another way of writing ‘FALL IN LOVE’ was ‘WALK THE PLANK.’ I was tired of balancing blind-fold on a slender beam, one slip and into the unplumbed sea” (26).

“Lately learned” implies prior ignorance. It is so interesting that a feeling, a sense of happiness, a supposed ‘euphoric’ feeling can be so scary. The unstated connection made between the narrators heart and an “unplumbed sea” demonstrates the depth of the universal language of love.

I see freight in the words plank, balancing, blind-fold, slip and even sea; but why are these words associated with the oh so beautiful LOVE? Well, this fear was just learned. ‘Ignorance is bliss,’ or, was.

Why is love a “slender plank?” Is it the fear of the unknown? Fear of getting hurt? Fear of shame? Or fear of slipping off the slender plank and into the unplumbed sea? The Author suggests that his/her new learning of the dangers of love is strictly a game of ‘survival of the fittest.’ If we have already ‘fallen’ in love… then how are we still on the plank? There’s a connection there. The only difference is that it is an emotional fall, not a physical fall.

“Balancing blind-fold on a slender beam” would instill fear in us, it would give us an almost animalistic instinct to fight, to prevail and to survive. Who did The Narrator ‘learn’ that you need to ‘survive’ love from? Is he/she crazy? Or did we teach ourselves? Are we dying to survive something that would never kill us in the first place?

In Sedgwick’s Tendencies, she states that,

“The survival of each one is a miracle. Everyone who survived has stories about how it was done” (1).

Maybe this is the “newly learned” case in Winterson’s Written on the Body? Should we fear love? or love the fear? I am going to go out on a limb and say that it is the fear of the unknown within the unplumbed sea that makes us fear surviving, but LOVE survival.

 

 

Biblical Beginnings

“Louise, in this single bed, between these garish sheets, I will find a map as likely as any treasure hunt.  I will explore you and mine you and you will redraw me according to your will.  We shall cross one another’s boundaries and make ourselves one nation.  Scoop me in your hands for I am good soil.  Eat of me and let me be sweet” (20).

The narrator describes Louise as lying in a single bed, implying that she is sleeping alone, right off the bat.  As the passage continues on, a prevalent use of geographical words arises: map, treasure hunt, explore, mine, cross, boundaries, one nation. The metaphor is clearly that the two souls will become one due to the crossing of boundaries and exploration that is to take place, however, this union has not yet been made.

The sentence in this passage that really sticks out to me is: “Eat of me and let me be sweet.”  Suddenly, mid-paragraph, the topic of discussion is abruptly directed away from geography and towards eating and sweetness: pleasure of the mouth.  This immediately elicited thoughts of the Garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit.  In Genesis 2-3, the fruit, so savory and tempting, has been forbidden with the threat that if eaten, Adam and Eve will die. Of course, they eat it, thus marking the beginning of the dichotomy between good and evil.

Genesis 2:24 reads “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”  The verse ties in with the narrator’s quote: “We shall cross one another’s boundaries and make ourselves one nation.”  This is extraordinarily significant, particularly in terms of sexuality and idealism.  Adam and Eve are said to be the first people to ever walk the Earth, and more importantly, the first couple: the bodies from which we were all born. Adam was attracted to Eve and vice-versa; a heterosexual precedent set for all of mankind to follow. This is where identity comes into play. Certain sects of Christianity denounce homosexuality and queerness in general, because it is claimed to be an “abomination,” but perhaps also because of this heterosexual biblical beginning of mortal life.  Perhaps those who are queer are identified as “strange,” because it is not how society commenced.

In her novel, Tendencies, Eve Sedgwick writes about the Christian holiday season and the “family” expectation that goes along with it, saying that the word, “family,” implies several characteristics that must be consistent throughout. An iconic religious example of a family is Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Heterosexual parents, and of course, there was no premarital sex. The societal expectations of people are rooted in the bible, and have not been adapted to the changing times.

 

 

Dryads

There are plenty of legends about women turning into trees but are there any about trees turning into women? Is it odd to say that your lover reminds you of a tree? Well she does, it’s the way her hair fills with wind and sweeps out around her head. Very often I expect her to rustle. She doesn’t rustle but her flesh has the moonlit shade of a silver birch. Would I had a hedge of such saplings naked and unadorned.

In this passage, the narrator compares Louise to a tree. The narrator compares Louise’s flesh to the shade of tree bark and says her hair fills with wind the way leaves rustle in the fall. This passage is unusual because the narrator is unsure of the commonality of this comparison. “Is it odd to say that your lover reminds you of a tree?” is the narrator’s central question in this passage and the reader’s immediate reaction is to say yes. At least, that was my first reaction. Comparing women to anything always hints of objectification to me, even when the comparison is to something beautiful, like in nature. On second reading, however, this question is not so outlandish because trees are quite common to women- both provide life and beauty to humans. I believe this passage is not just about the similarities one can draw between the beauty of a woman and the beauty of a tree but also about the abilities both have to provide life and the narrators newfound understanding of this. The narrator is asking us to reexamine identity and our bodies as they relate to nature. The narrator wishes to have a tree as “naked and unadorned” as Louise, signifying that the narrator is more interested in trees turning into women than women turning into trees, as questioned in the beginning of the paragraph. In Queer and Now, Sedgwick talks about how queer youth develop attachments to cultural objects as a mean of finding queer representation where there is none while the narrator only develops attachments to objects in nature when viewed as a representation of women. The narrator’s life focuses on lovers where they do not exist while queer youth focus on LGBTQ representation where there is none.

The narrator is going against the norm by asking this question, as it is more common for women to turn into trees in legends, such as the tales of dryads (tree nymphs) who turned into trees to resist the advances of male gods such as Zeus. The narrator seems to be comparing Louise to a dryad and therefore zirself to Zeus. Given that Zeus was always chasing after women and goddesses and our narrator seems to move equally fast from lover to lover, this comparison to Greek mythology might not be too far off.