Tag: cancer

The Christmas Conundrum: Rewriting the Family in “Written on the Body”

     For a brief period in the text, Louise and the narrator of Written on the Body share a quaint and domestic life together. With Elgin out of the picture, the two lovers can fully enjoy each other’s company and embrace the positive aspects of stable, affectionate monogamy. Notably, this domestic reprieve occurs during the Christmas season. Louise and the narrator, along with the rest of the world, get caught up in the holiday spirit. They cannot help but decorate their “flat with garlands of holly and ivy woven from the woods” (Winterson 99). Though they have “very little money,” they still find peace and cheer in “the season of goodwill” (99-100). Sadly for the two lovers, though, this fragile joy comes crashing down around them. By setting all scenes of domesticity at Christmastime, Winterson emphasizes the ubiquity of hegemonic ideals of domestic happiness.

     As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick points out in Tendencies, Christmas marks a “time when all the institutions are speaking with one voice” (5). As all institutions repeatedly promote the monolith of Christmas, an increasing connection emerges between Christmastime and “the image of ‘the’ family” (6). Of course, Louise and the narrator do not conform to any traditional concept of what “the family” looks or acts like; their relationship begins with an affair, they do not share children, and they may both be women. Still, they enjoy the holiday season just like any other family. “We sang and played and walked for miles looking at buildings and watching people,” says the narrator (99). The couple’s singing calls to mind Christmas carols, while their playing evokes a childlike joy. Perhaps they also admire Christmas lights while taking their milelong walks. They even learn the quintessential lesson of Christmas: the importance of family. “A treasure had fallen into our hands,” says the narrator, “and the treasure was each other” (99). The statement is overly schlocky, romantic, and sentimental, especially for such a cynical narrator. In other words, the statement embodies all the cardinal aspects of Christmastime.

     Despite their poverty and unconventionality, Louise and the narrator remain “insultingly happy” (99). Their happiness does not just insult Elgin or Jacqueline. Rather, it insults the established order. The couple demonstrates that one does not have to adhere to conventional expectations in order to find fulfillment. However, their rebellion comes at a cost. Elgin arrives on “Christmas Eve” to inform the narrator that Louise has leukemia (100). He undercuts the couple’s happiness the night before the glorious day, the symbolic culmination of their joy. In a season characterized by brilliant lights and twinkling stars, Elgin casts “a shadow” over their contrived domesticity (100). His cruelty reveals that even the most “jovial” of seasons can have a “menacing” underbelly if you do not conform to societal expectations (100). The two lovers will never fit in, no matter how many garlands they string. Winterson illustrates that individual acts of resistance against hegemony only ever end in tragedy or martyrdom. To effect real change, the entire system must be discarded like the carcass of a Christmas turkey.

The inside of your body is innocent

“Will you let me crawl inside you, stand guard over you, trap them as they come at you? Why can’t I dam their blind tide that filthies your blood? Why are there no lock gates on the portal vein? The inside of your body is innocent, nothing has taught it fear. Your artery canals trust their cargo, they don’t check the shipment in the blood.” (115)

The narrator is asking themselves multiple rhetoric questions about the human body, and how the sickness that is affecting Louise’s body manages to take hold. The questions are filled with naïve and hopeful imagery, of “gates” that could be closed to keep cancer out of the body. The narrator is using the questions to cope with the facts they have just learned about the sickness that will cause their lover to die.

The passage is lined with a theme of ships and the sea. The narrator uses words like “tide”, “canals”, “cargo” and “shipment” to describe the ways in which the sickness is transported through the body. They also describe the trust the body has in the “shipment” that is being transported. The body does not expect a deathly attack of cancer cells and is consequently not prepared to defend it.

Parallel to that, one could compare the narrator to Louise’s body. They have never lost a lover to a deadly sickness, or death at all for that matter. They are innocent, no one has taught them this specific kind of fear. The narrator didn’t check the “cargo”, the “shipment”, that Louise is carrying with her because they never had to before. Maybe they would have wished for a “lock gate” themselves, to protect their heart from hurt and pain. However, it is already too late. They have fallen in love with Louise and Louise is going to die. There is no changing nature. They can try to prolong Louise’s life, fight cancer as long and hard as possible – only at a terribly painful prize.