Category: 2023 Blog Post

On page 137 of Written on the Body, the narrator likens Louise to an olive tree, detailing the pleasure they experience from eating the fruit from the tree that is Louise. While olives are not a significant recurring symbol throughout the novel, the narrator frequently likens Louise to food. At times, Louise is soup, other times she is a fig or honey. Perhaps in likening Louise to food, the narrator is emphasizing their need for her. The narrator does not simply desire, miss, or admire Louise, but instead holds a sort of obsessive connection to her. As any living creature must eat, the narrator seems almost as miserable without Louise as they might be without proper nourishment. The absence of Louise’s love drives the narrator into an almost crazed state of loss, each of their senses heightened by thoughts and memories of her. The narrator is unable to detach themselves from Louise, unable to live without the thought of her, unable to sustain a proper quality of life without feeding off of her love. 

These food-related metaphors also emphasize the importance of lust, desire, and physical intimacy the narrator holds in their relationships. These food-related metaphors are often used to describe scenes or memories of very physical interactions between Louise with the narrator. The narrator clearly has a certain “taste” for Louise, but it is one that seems to be primarily physical despite their clear infatuation with her and their relationship. The comparison between Louise and an olive tree offers is not as descriptive and clear as some of the other earlier comparisons, but despite this, it is still one that clearly emulates the dynamic of their relationship. The narrator notes that “It is my joy to get at the stone of her” (137) and the section revolves around taste. Mentions of mouths, tongues, taste, and other sensations provide a slightly sexual undertone to the passage, especially in comparison with other moments from the novel; however, this moment is much less detailed and instead reaches a broader audience. The narrator begins to address an unidentified “you” in the third paragraph of this page, where they detail the bursting of an olive upon the initial bite into the fruit. The address to a third party seems to invite an outsider to relate to what the narrator speaks of, especially since this passage is riddled heavily with metaphor and lacks personal details of Louise or the narrator. This allows the metaphor of food to move away from descriptions of physical desire into a tone that is much more hopeful and emulative of the relationship as a whole. The “burst of an olive” might be compared the the start of a relationship, where feelings of solitude and uncertainty can be left behind as a promising new relationship begins. As the narrator wishes to reach Louise’s stone, she recognizes that the fruit will be eaten until there is nothing left, but makes it clear that to have Louise’s stone, or perhaps Louise at her most raw and exposed, is a welcome trade. The narrator tastes not just the fruit of Louise, but her inner self. This was, and clearly is still, a strong desire planted in the narrator that they cannot seem to let go of.

“What then kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, make use of you at night. To crave another while pecking your cheek. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it is mine to call,” (Page 186-187).

The narrator makes the claim that neglect kills love, supporting that with a cohesive list proving this claim. They start by listing the kind actions that people stop doing, and then listing what cruel acts they do instead. They do this using two anaphors for the different sections, first starting their sentences with “Not to…” and then “To…” This choice feels reminiscent of the types of lists we have seen in other writers’ work on normal vs deviant lifestyle and sexuality choices such as Michael Warner’s “The Trouble with Normal” and Eve Sedgwick’s Christmas Effects list in “Tendencies.”  

Here, the narrator is examining what long-term love looks like. They have only experienced short-term infatuation, obsessed with affairs, spontaneous decisions and morally questionable but romantic ideas. With this limited and intentionally stunted experience, it’s ironic that the narrator is pondering what it is to neglect a relationship. Applying these ideas to their relationship with Louise, Louise must be “the neglected” in this scenario because the speaker left her. However, it’s unclear whether they really reached a part of their relationship with the kind of familiarity that this passage describes. Doing the dishes, making the bed, and setting the table are very late-stage acts in a relationship, much farther than the honeymoon phase that Louise and the narrator had reached. The only way the narrator would have any insight into a long-lasting relationship that turned neglectful is through Louise and Elgin’s relationship. I propose that the narrator is identifying with Elgin’s role, feeling that they have fallen into the dispassionate-husband-who-doesn’t-know-how-to-love-their-wife-anymore category. Furthermore, they are critiquing this role, questioning whether a party is to blame for this phenomenon.  

The narrator speaks with an implication of guilt, as if they have failed to avoid this relationship dynamic with Louise. Worse, they have instead neglected her even sooner than Elgin did, by leaving her so soon into their relationship. Perhaps even, since the narrator is pondering these relationship aspects that they did not even achieve, they are thinking about the future they ran from. So afraid of falling into this relationship dynamic, the narrator abandoned Louise under the guise of “for her benefit” before they could reach that phase. This calls into question the inevitability of these roles, and whether the narrator had really escaped the role they were so adamant to avoid. It seems to me like the narrator is struggling with these binaries, eternally frozen with the uncertainty of how to exist outside these roles, but desperate to try.  

On page 36, Winterson depicts the main character eating with Louise, the married woman that they have fallen in love with. They are eating soup that Louise has made, and it is in this moment that the narrator finds themself overcome by lust for her. Winterson writes “When she lifted the soup spoon to her lips how I longed to be that innocent piece of stainless steel” (36). By thinking this, the narrator is showing the reader that they long to be closer to Louise by any means possible. They know that Louise is married and shares certain intimacies of her life with her husband, which the narrator is not privy to. By wishing to be the soup spoon, they wish to assume a role of importance in her life as well as share an erotic experience with her. They are demonstrating that they find Louise so attractive that even something as “innocent” as a soup spoon can become sexual in her hands.  

This passage relates to the rest of the novel so far because it shows how the narrator’s sexuality and lust play a role in their decision-making. Shortly after this passage, the narrator realizes that the clock is ticking on their comfortable relationship with Jacqueline, and it won’t be long before they leave her for Louise. Clearly, the narrator cannot keep themselves from Louise, as they find every part of her attractive, even the way she eats. Therefore, they are willing to trade in comfort and contentment for instability and excessive lust with a married woman. In the next sentence, Winterson writes “I would gladly have traded the blood in my body for half a pint of vegetable stock” (36). This statement indicates that the main character would do anything for Louise and is desperate to be a part of her life in some regard. That desperation is what fuels the beginning of their relationship, and even the bulk of it to follow. Not all of it is driven by lust, but that is what pushes the narrator to end their relationship with Jacqueline and take up with Louise full-time.  

Louise is one of the few people who make the narrator feel free but also in control, which is something that they seem to value. Toward the end of the book, when the narrator is reminiscing about the good times they had with Louise, they describe her as “My Lady of the Verdigris. Louise is one of the few women who might still be beautiful if she went mouldy” (161). When I first read this, I assumed the “Lady of the Verdigris” was some painting, but upon minimal further research, it seems like the narrator just means Louise is their teal woman. This is an interesting way to describe her, because having grown up in the US, the most famous “Lady of the Verdigris” is the Statue of Liberty. I don’t know if it symbolizes the same things in the UK or if they even think about it at all, but the going “mouldy” (161) and the “copper” hair (161) definitely seem to point to a copper statue that’s oxidized. I feel like the Statue of Liberty can signify two things, especially for people who don’t live in the US.  

The first is, of course, freedom or liberty. The narrator leads a life that seems free of commitment. They describe settling down with Jacqueline as “wallow[ing] in contentment,” and explain that “[c]ontentment is the positive side of resignation” (76). I think that the narrator telling us about all the people they’ve dated in the past characterizes them as a free person who doesn’t get hung up break ups and moves on (fairly) easily. I think this is also demonstrated through the fact that almost all the women the narrator dates are married, while the narrator isn’t; they aren’t legally tied to another person, which gives them the ability to easily date around.  

The second idea the Statue of Liberty could signify, looking at the US in the 1990s from a queer perspective, could be control. There was the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy (1993) and the Defense of Marriage Act (1996), for example, and while both of these were implemented/passed after Written on the Body was published (1992), I’d imagine that the suppression of queer identity was present throughout the earlier ‘90s as well. After the narrator hits Jacqueline, they say that they always prided themselves on being the “superior partner” who didn’t overreact and was able to control themselves (86). They had control in their relationship with Louise until she got cancer, and then they attempted to maintain their control by running away to the run-down house in the country. I think it’s in the country where the narrator starts to develop as a character and starts to loosen their control over both the narrative and their relationship with Louise. They start to tell us more about themselves. And in the very end, they embrace the cliches (180) and possible lose control of their sanity (188). 

(source: https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/lgbtq/90s)

“When she lifted the soup spoon to her lips how I longed to be that innocent piece of stainless steel” (Winterson 36), evokes the type of love that is displayed in Romeo and Juliet. However, with a closer read, both of these love connections can clearly be classified as obsessive rather than passionate, controlling rather than romantic. The all-consuming language (“the blood in my body” and “resurrected”) as the narrator describes Louise simply eating soup gives way to sexual connotations (“take me in your mouth” and “pleasure”). It’s not simply an objectification of the lover, but a desire to be her only source of sustenance, to have ownership.

Louise’s body is functioning normally, and, like all humans, she needs to eat to survive. The narrator inserts themselves into this fundamentally human act and makes it about their perceived connection with Louise, their need for her, and their need for her to need them back. They are not content with being her company, they need to be her lifeblood. The connections between bodies and food is obvious in the repetition of certain words like “mouth,” “lips,” and “blood,” in tandem with “vegetable stock,” “vermicelli,” “soup,” and “butter.” This is a dangerous type of obsession, because on the surface it seems passionately romantic, so as not to invite argument or denial. Because of this, a question of consent can be asked, because Louise is not aware of the narrator’s train of thought as she is eating her soup, she is not aware of the fact that she is being sexualized to such an extent. To put so much of yourself into one person is to saddle them with the responsibility of the magnitude of your love, something which they might not be comfortable with. It is also risky on the narrator’s end, because if Louise remains unaware of these feelings she is likely to hurt them, or even if she is aware, it’s almost impossible to not hurt the people you love. There’s a power imbalance on both sides in this passage, one because Louise does not deserve to be obsessed over in such a way, and two because one person should not be given the power of obsessive love over another.

It has been pretty clear how much of a chokehold Louise has had on our narrator per say. One of the themes that this novel dives into is the idea of morality and the way that extra-marital relationships can affect lives Winterson writes, “We were patient enough to count the hairs on each other’s heads, too impatient to get undressed” (162). The use of the words “patient” and “impatient” bring the tone of carefulness and un-carefulness that juxtapose Louise and Elgin’s relationship versus Louise and the narrator. Careful enough to not get caught around Elgin, but willing to risk it all when Louise and the narrator are together. “Undressed” also undoubtedly has the connotation of eloping. It is also emphasized to a certain extent the extra initiatives in place to tread lightly by the use of the metaphor of tediously counting hairs.  Another huge theme throughout the novel is vulnerability. We catch glimpses of these moments which allow myself as a reader to peer into who this narrator really is. Winterson follows by writing, “Neither of us had the upper hand, we wore matching wounds” (163). The narrator expresses this feeling of remorse, and shares the ultimate lose-lose situation because they know that what they are pursuing is something that can ultimately cause pain on both ends. Whether or not the narrator ends up with Louise, someone has to get hurt and that acknowledgement can also fuel that desire and passion of being “impatient to get undressed”. It is also important to note the references to body parts; “hairs”, “hands”, and “wounds” – the recurring theme of limbs and body parts reveal the way that bodies hold and an important variable to connecting with others in the perspective of the narrative. Written on the Body, as a title also queues us to believe there is something to be discovered or learned from the body. These few lines alone – show us how our bodies can carry so much of what we know without words. The narrator goes on to describe, “Skin is waterproof but my skin was not waterproof against Louise. She flooded me” (163). By stating almost an achilles heel for Louise, the narrator shapes our perception of her to be this epitome of “love” on a pedestal. While the narrator’s use of poetic form insinuate a deep feeling for Louise, it also brings in a factor of “distorted” pain. What I am trying to say is that the feeling that also triggers connection and vulnerability with Louise, also ties with feelings of instability and worry.  To be flooded with emotions can have both a positive and negative connotation. I think a big reason for this is the societal norm founded through monogamous christianity. While this relationship exists outside of this circle it causes the internal questioning but also the questioning of the relationship itself.

I am so glad to be back!