Category: 2016 Blog Post

“In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland isn’t it?”

Love embarks new sensations into the inner soul. For the narrator, love is a life-shattering complicated lifestyle that has created a place called Wonderland in order to further construct the visualization of an adulterer. The language portrays a person who compares themselves with a population who are criticized for making love in the dark, in an unvisualized environment. An environment where no one has to know, no one can’t know.

Does the narrator have guilt, shame? Possibly, but the way they compare themselves with “others” only further emphasizes their shameless ways. Another possible way to interpret the narrators view is for us as readers to perceive the narrator into a double individual, who believes love can be found in any type of circumstances, in a wonderland where we as readers know that it doesn’t exist. Of course Wonderland is an idea, an imagination, an inexistent place. What I really think this passage is about, the narrators imaginable place where only they know the content, the circumstance, the troubles, and the heartbreaks. The narrator is in control of his own imagination, his wonderland. Unfortunately, they have no control of the real world, a world where they will be criticized for their actions.

Work Cited:

Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body. 2001. New York, NY: Vintage.

In the book Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson, the narrator starts out by saying, “Why is the measure of love loss” (10)? I find this, a great hook because the word “measure” is something I rarely associate with love. I don’t think of love as having measures or greatness or tiny portions that are possible. Measures are for music and food. However, this led me to think this sentence means that the biggest loves are the biggest losses such as the great Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. That was a great love and it came with the biggest loss: death.

In addition, it might be far off but the quote could also mean that no matter how much one loves there will always be loss. Love is vulnerable. Loving someone fully and allowing them to love you requires one to reveal whom one truly is and by doing this, one guards must come down. One can love as a friend, peer, professor, or lover and in each case the fear of reciprocation is where the loss may come.

I think by starting with this sentence in the beginning of the novel sets up the book to talk about love in the perspective of an unhappy ending. Love is complicated and messy and comes with limits and restrictions. This novel explores these restrictions through the narrator’s perspective of being in relationships with multiple different girls. Time, distance, traits, marriage all cause separation and walls from living happily ever after. By being unable to find “the one” to settle down with and that makes the narrator truly happy, develops this theme of loss and explores the possibilities of what makes all these different losses possible. I think the narrator is trying to say that love is not possible without loss.

“You were driving but I was lost in my own navigation” (Winterson, 17).

We see a continuous crumbling structure of love woven within this novel. This idea of being within ones “own navigation” comes from the narrator’s overt fixation of love and lust but not knowing how to hold on to that, maybe even choosing the wrong lovers. The language used is clear and concise in its metaphorical usage, the idea of being in a relationship and progressing together within a relationship. The idea of the narrator’s “own navigation” cements the idea of the narrator’s lost infatuation with their love.

Understanding this passage, means understanding a lot of this novel thus far. The narrator falls in and out of love with married women and single women. It’s as though the narrator gets the same unfulfilling result, being on someone else’s navigation. The narrator is on this high, and it is not until they hit reality that they realize this relationship is only a façade. The lover’s however, aren’t always “driving” the relationship, and in many ways the narrator is driving, and they’re trying to navigate their journey with the narrator only to realize that love is not being reciprocated.

I think, though, that the narrator wants readers to feel compassion and empathy for themselves. We, as readers, see the unsteadiness of the relationships, however our sympathy should not be towards the narrator, it should be more towards the lovers. The narrator is manipulating us. The narrator’s captivation and undeniable love for a companion is not valid because the narrator is deteriorating. Deteriorating because one relationship ends as the other begins, never cementing in an ending.

 

“But you are gazing at me the way God gazed at Adam and I am embarrassed by your look of love and possession and pride.” Page 18

“The way God gazed at Adam.”  Man is made “in the image of God,” so is Louise (assuming this is Louise) seeing herself in the narrator? Does she see a kindred Spirit, but one that she has created for herself? Was Adam truly the most spectacular thing God had ever seen, after spending an eternity amidst the תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (chaos and nothingness)? Was her marriage the nothingness and the chaos that inspired her to create the world, and eventually make the narrator her Adam?

Adam was not enough though, there has to be a Lilith, and eventually an Eve. A “mistake” before the “final draft.” If the narrator is Adam, who will be Lilith? Who will be Eve? Is this the forbearing of discontent? Of the self-righteousness and anger? Is Eden the bedroom? When will they be stripped of their innocence, their ignorance, their paradise? What will be their ultimate sin, the consumption of the forbidden fruit? Is this affair not the fruit, but the creation of the world itself?

“I am embarrassed by your look of love and possession and pride.”  Perhaps being “Adam” is more for her sake (assuming the narrator uses she pronouns (my own personal assumption)) than for her lover’s, in that this is the very first time for her that she has felt this way, that she has been looked upon with this combination of strong emotion. This being the first time for her, perhaps her only point of reference is the very first human. But while she is in the presence of “God,” is she not as powerful, as almighty? Is the fact that she can invoke these feelings not divine?

 

“I thought the fiery furnace must be better than central heating.”

 [Furnace —->]

The context of the passage leading up to this sentence depicts the narrator’s uncertainty and conflicting emotions regarding their past relationships and feelings. This sentence further highlights this confusion. The sentence initially begins with “I thought.” Immediately, this indicates a previous thought process, opinion or assumption that no longer stands. “I thought,” but I no longer think.

The narrator then proceeds to compare a fiery furnace to central heating. A fiery furnace for the passion and heat of an overall intense relationship? Central heating to represent the boring and mundane elements of comfort and ease? Why, however, has their perception of relationships changed? Why let their past experience be indicative of the present or future.

I believe with the syntax and diction of this sentence, as well as the preceding passage as a whole, the narrator is once again feeding into to mystery of the novel, continuing to make the outcome of their actions increasingly unclear. In doing this, the narrator is further adding to the excitement and interesting elements of the novel by backtracking on statements they have previously declared to the reader.

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

The narrator’s wry observation of a public display of commitment transforming into a private betrayal is, superficially, a syntactically clever way of contrasting the publicity of marriage to the secrecy of adultery. However, the phrases “free to all” and “gives way” do the most work to convey the narrator’s attitude toward marriage and to reveal how the narrator attempts to position themself in the audience’s eyes.

The narrator’s description of marriage as a “public display and free to all” could be taken to mean that marriage is a public display that its audience does not have to pay to attend or observe. However, the word “and” between the phrases “public display” and “free to all” suggests that the phrases modify marriage separately, and that what the narrator is actually saying is that the public display of marriage can be enacted by any two people at no cost. If marriage is free, and is directly at odds with adultery, then the unstated implication is that there must be some cost to adultery. The implication that adultery is both costly and secret, while marriage is free and public, diminishes the importance of marriage while simultaneously dramatizing the narrator’s previous affairs. The narrator invites the reader’s pity by flipping the traditional dichotomy of marriage versus adultery so that marriage seems to come free and easy while adultery requires a payment in exchange for the intimacy of a secret liaison.

With the phrase “gives way,” the narrator excuses themself from blame for the destruction of their lovers’ marriages. If a marriage simply “gives way” to an adulterous affair, then there is no single explanation for the collapse. Rather, the yield implies that the marriage was not strong initially, or that its flimsy publicity caused it to folding into a secret affair. By playing up both the cost of adultery and the flimsiness of marriage, the narrator asks for sympathy for their experiences while also sidestepping the reader’s judgement.

“Shouldn’t you take that vow and break it the way you made it, in the open air?” (Winterson, 16).

This passage is written in the same beautiful and sarcastic prose as the remainder of the book, while mirroring the confusing descriptions given by the narrator. Honestly, the narrator said it themself that it seems obvious that they can’t be trusted, and this passage attests to this perfectly.

As the narrator says, breaking the vow of marriage “… the way you made it, in the open air” implies that the vows originally were pointless; they were made publicly, but broken carefully and privately. They should instead, they seem to say, be broken obviously, as they were obviously going to be broken anyway. In this passage, and specifically with this statement, they show their bitterness over the institution of marriage.

Where is that bitterness coming from? The narrators writing style uses many rhetorical questions in order to support their stories, such as the one used in reference to this passage. To me, this technique seems to be used to convince themself that their decision making is appropriate. The consistent questions associated with their actions, opinions and extramarital affairs seem to be used as a means to seek approval for actions they don’t necessarily condone themelf. This is why the narrator continues to confuse me; the narrator obviously tries to use passages like these to attack the marriages that they destroy through their participation in affairs, but the defensive rhetoric is interspersed with moments of beautiful and poetic language, and a yearning for a love worthy of the vows that she has a part in destroying. Directly before this passage, the narrator acknowledges that one affair deceived them and appeared as love, then follows this despondent example with a rather sarcastic attack against marriage and the love that creates it. To me, passages like these point to and underlying problem that has confused the narrator, both hating and wanting marriage and love.

Works Cited

Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body. New York: Vintage International, 1993. Print, 16.