Category: 2016 Blog Post

“You never give away your heart you lend it time to time. If it were not how could we take it back without asking? “ I think these two lines from the novel shed light on the whole novel. When the narrator speaks about lending your heart out, I think he has a very narrow perspective on it. Before he met Louise, he taught himself not to give your everything to someone because they knew first handed first hand the evilness it can bring such as the affairs which had multiple of. Also, the evilness of lies that one has to tangle their self in while knowing your hurting the person that loves you, such as the narrator and Jacqueline. The words lend and take are very important in this because these words gives the reader a sense of possession. The narrator is giving the imagine of lending your heart like its an object you posses, but the first line of the novel is “why is the measure of love lost? (9)”. The narrator is explaining that when we lose something that means something to us is when we see the true value it had to us. So, I think the narrator is trying to show us that when you give away something that you control, you see how much it really means to you.

The second line is a question that shows how emotionally unattached the narrator was in the begging of the story. I think this line helps to show one of the main meanings of the book, which was to give people hope that people can change. The narrator went from having affairs with multiple women to finding the love of his life where he was so emotionally invested that he devoted weeks of his life to learning everything he could about human anatomy and cancer to help Louise. The first line also shows the readers the transformation of the narrator because they say with certainty that you NEVER give your heart away. By, the end of the book I think that they did give their heart away to Louise. It is said that if you love, someone, let them go. The narrator knew Louise needed help and that only her ex-husband could give her the right care she needed. Even though it was tough for the narrator to accept the idea of her being with him it was what he thought would be best for her and to me if you truly love someone you’ll always want what’s best for them even if its not what you want.

In class we discussed the painting, Love and the Pilgrim. We discussed that the narrator is the pilgrim holding on to the thicket of thorns, which was his troubled pass. In the beginning when the narrator only lent their heart out for weeks or a few months and had affairs with women this was his trouble pass, which was shown by the thorns. Louise who was the angle was showing him how to truly love someone and pulling him out of the thicket of thorns. Also, in Eve Sedgwicks book, Tendencies she illustrated societies perception of love and perfection through typical Christmas ideas. In Christmas ads there are always a happy family under the Christmas tree with Santa or the idea that a happy family that goes to church on Christmas and everything is perfect. These lines in Written On The Body help to show the realness of love. Another thing this novel helps us understand is breaking societies perception of many things such as the thought that being in love and in married is always perfect. This isn’t true; there is sometimes heartbreak, affairs, and lies all, which the novel shows us. Also, by not giving us a gender it made me break down any typical perception I had of a man and women in a relationship.

“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.

“Sometimes I think I’m free, coughed up like Jonah from the whale, but then I turn a corner and recognize myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know.” (Winterson, 120)

 

After the narrator decides to leave Louise and isolate themselves from their everyday life, they become fixated on the understanding of anatomy attempting to reconcile their deep rooted and transformative feelings for Louise. The narrator describes themself as intertwined in Louise’s anatomy. The narrator portrays themselves as “in your skin, lodged in your bones” (Winterson, 120) illustrating the ways in which they have become inseparable from Louise and in a sense consumed by her.

Unable to recognize themself, the narrator reiterates that Louise is “what [they] know,” (Winterson, 120) highlighting how this relationship has changed the narrator’s behavior and anatomy in addition to the ways in which they have lost sight of their individual personhood. The narrator thinks they have regained their autonomy describing their freedom as “coughed up like Jonah from the whale.” As Jonah was thrown of the ship as a last resort for survival and then eaten whole by a giant whale in the biblical narrative, the narrator sees their decision to leave Louise as forced and for the greater good. This self-imposed isolation was a means of sacrifice for the long-term well being of Louise. Like Jonah, the narrator survives but this is only physical.

This passage illustrates the narrator’s complete transformation at the hands of Louise and viscerally describes the physical trauma of separation. The narrator’s current state is uncharacteristic of their relationship history, which is marked by short periods of emotionally charged time. The narrator has changed in multiple ways, which has permanently altered their existence.

“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.

” This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The wall are exploding… Moon and stars are magnified in this room…. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm.” Page 190

The moon, stars, and the world are use as a metaphor to signify infinity between the love that the narrator has for Louise. It is the symbol of deep affection to a woman that has been victim of a sickness that eventually helped them become closer. When the narrator implies a new story, a new beginning, it might be the start of a new life for both the narrator and Louise.

Throughout the novel, the narrator portrays the image of self, when they repeatedly introduce the word “I”, in the first person perspective. By the end of the novel when the love between the narrator and Louise succeeds, the transition from “I” to “we” changes the image of both the narrator and the novel. My first impression was that this is the last draw for the narrator. Louise has finally come back and the narrator can’t waste any time objectifying her the way the narrator did throughout the novel. The new beginning for Louise and the narrator is no longer based on “I” or “you” but rather “we”, the two of them together not one more important than the other.

Furthermore, maybe the way the novel ended represents the novel as a whole. I like the fact that it leaves the reader to construct his/her own ending in a number of ways. There is no certainty as to what happens, the only certainty we have is that for the narrator “this is where the story starts” (190). Thinking in this train of thought, could it be that this was the case during the entire novel? Not only was the ending an opportunity for the reader to construct their own thoughts, but in a way the entire novel falls into the same gap. This might be crazy talk, but as readers we were given the opportunity to decide whether or not the narrator was male or female, or perhaps the idea of a genderless narrator is what pulled us through the novel. Either way, we construct our own hypothesis while the narrator only provided the reader with evidence and support.

Winterson, Jeanette. Written On The Body. 1992. New York, NY: Vintage

“I awoke sweating and chilled. Jacqueline slept peacefully beside me, the light was leaking through the old curtains. Muffled in my dressing gown I went into the garden, glad of the wetness sudden beneath my feet. The air was clean with a hint of warmth and the sky had pink clawmarks pulled through it.” (42)

This passage is presented after we find the narrator starting to question their commitment to Jacqueline, they presumably have sex with Louise for the first time, and they have an uncomfortable dream about an ex. The narrator is in purgatory, as they straddle between two relationships, a more foreign one which they know is “proper” but unfulfilling, and one similar to those of their past, with a married woman, and for the first time, being the adulterer (although unmarried).

The passage is riddled with opposites, the narrator’s clammy awakening adjacent Jacqueline’s peaceful sleep, the light of the new day through the aged curtains, the damp chill they felt while waking subsides with the “hint of warmth,” illustrating the narrator’s sense of conflict, and their anxiety about being in limbo between two unfamiliar situations.

The narrator uses the words “sweating,” “leaking,” and “wetness,” all evoking water or moisture, but each received differently. First, they wake in a cold sweat, a contradiction in itself showing their discomfort with their current situation. The light “leaks,”
implying a slowly growing change, one that needs resolution lest it flood the entire space, perhaps to wake Jacqueline from her sleep, or, maybe, her ignorance of her partner’s infidelity. Finally, the “wetness” gladdens the narrator, who, cold and sweating, feels more comfortable standing upon similarly damp the dewy garden ground than they did sweating next to the peaceful, presumably dry Jacqueline. The “hint of warmth,” like the leaking light, will likely spread, warming the narrator the longer they stay outside, the farther she is from Jacqueline.

“They did it, my parents did it, now I will do it won’t I, arms outstretched, not to hold you, just to keep my balance, sleep walking to that armchair,” (10).

The narrator is talking about the mindlessness of marriage. The “they” is the narrator’s grandparents, suggesting that this cycle is something the narrator has not just witnessed from their parents, but from another generation as well. The addition of “won’t I” reveals the narrator’s hesitation or doubt about getting married, thereby falling into the cycle. “Arms outstretched” implies that the narrator is going towards an embrace, but they tell us that this isn’t to hold “you” but instead to keep their balance. This suggests that the narrator views marriage to be an individual act of balancing, not mutual support between two people. “Keep my balance” implies that falling, thereby failing, at marriage is a possibility. Perhaps “keeping my balance” is the narrator’s way of revealing that they believe marriage to be very difficult and consuming. The choice of “sleep walking” implies thoughtlessness and lack of understanding behind what getting married means. The narrator is revealing their opinion that people get married for insubstantial reasons. The armchair is a symbol for monogamy and growing old with one person. The narrator has revealed that they have been with a multitude of people, and though they were with those people for varying stretches of time, not a single person has yet to stick around for a relatively significant amount of time. Additionally, the narrator has revealed that many of the people they have been with have been married, which supports the idea that the narrator does not believe in marriage and the monogamy that it entails. In general, the entire sentence reveals the narrator’s hesitation or dislike for the institution of marriage.

“Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there… I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn’t know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.” (89)

 

Louise has the reading hands that can translate the code that is written on the narrator’s body, which as the narrator informs us is a difficult task considering she informs us as readers that she closes herself off to people who could decipher her code. Louise not only translates the code of the narrator, but “translated me into her own book,” made the narrator’s story a part of her story. The passage is beautifully linked to the narrator’s own life and career as a translator; the narrator can translate Russian, but the Louise can translate and understand the narrator.

Louise seems to have a profound transformational effect on the narrator’s outlook on life, love and relationships throughout the text, but is explicitly clear in this passage. I think this passage remarks on some of the previous stories of the narrator’s past relationship, all of which involved a partner which failed to translate the “secret code” written on their body. The passage shows that Louise was the first of the narrator’s partners to translate them, understand them, and bring them “into her own book.” I think that the narrator’s obsession with Louise throughout the remainder of this book can be explained by this passage, that the code that allows them to love unconditionally (especially important, considering Louise is still married at the time,) and is eventually able to measure the love they felt for Louise by losing her.

“I have flown the distance of your body from side to side of your ivory coast. I know the forests where I can rest and feed. I have mapped you with my naked eye and stored you out of sight.” (Winterson 117)

This excerpt fits perfectly into the theme “Map and territory” that we started to discuss in class. Although her name is not mentioned throughout a dozen of pages, here the narrator is talking about Louise, using the pronouns “you” (117), as though he/she is talking to her directly.

This passage reminds me of the colonization of Africa. Historically, the British have colonized certain regions of Africa, inhabited by African peoples, just as the narrator is appropriating Louise’s body, which, since she is married, “belongs” to Elgin. The reference to “ivory” (117), a very valuable material, conveys the idea that Louise is precious to the narrator; but also, since ivory was used to be traded between nations, it reminds the reader that Louise is the property of two persons, who fight to possess her. Louise’s body is compared to a land the narrator has “mapped with [his/her] naked eye” (117). The love of the narrator for Louise becomes real through his/her appropriation of her body. These three sentences start with the anaphora of “I”, reinforcing the idea that the narrator has the power and the authority that enabled him/her to conquer Louise. Also, beyond the sexual connotation, the idea that “the forests (…) feed” (117) the narrator shows that Louise’s love is vital to him/her, which is developed in the last part of the book when the narrator keeps desperately looking for Louise. Indeed it seems that the possession of Louise’s body brings safety to the narrator, as he/she says later on the same page: “Your body is my landing strip.” (117) Moreover, the fact that Louise’s body is “stored (…) out of sight” seems to anticipate the rest of the plot. Indeed, although Louise is no longer physically present, her body is deeply imprinted in the narrator’s mind.

“I am living in a red bubble made up of Louise’s hair. It’s the sunset time of year but it’s not the dropping disk of light that holds me in the shadows of the yard. It’s the colour I crave, floodings of you running down the edges of the sky on to the brown earth on to the grey stone.” (Winterson, 138)
Red contrasts with brown and grey. The red represents the ethereal, the sky, and the sun, enveloping the earthly and banal. The red could be the passion of romance that is far more intense than the mundane cares of daily life. In the broader context of the book, this could relate to the narrator’s tendency to prefer the more dramatic romance instead of the dullness of marriage. The narrator is held in the shadows by this colour, the red of Louise’s hair. The red bubble is the narrator’s world. The red completely encompasses the narrator’s existence. This may not be a bad thing, as bubbles can be comforting. There are repeated references to round and curved shapes. The use of the disk shape of the sun, spherical bubbles, and even the droplet shape of liquid running down edges are all round and smooth. This could also convey the narrator’s comfort in the thought of Louise. Spherical shapes have also been viewed as geometrically perfect and possibly divine. However, the narrator also refers to themselves as being held in the shadows. So, perhaps the narrator’s obsession with this divine red could ironically be the thing that keeps them separate from it, locked in the boring and earthly. In the broader context of the novel this could infer that by focusing on Louise’s existence, the narrator is ultimately separating themself from their supposedly idyllic romance with Louise’s. The narrator idealizes their relationship with Louise while also idolizes Louse. This ultimately is what drives them from Louise.