Tag: jeanette winterson

the Piranesi nightmare

“Reason. I was caught in a Piranesi nightmare. The logical paths the proper steps led nowhere. My mind took me up tortuous staircases that opened into doors that opened into nothing.” (p.92)

The following text passage stroke me as very interesting when I read it, especially the mention of the “Piranesi nightmare”. There is a novel called Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, published in 2020, that I read last summer. It is set in a parallel world that is one endless house with an infinite number of staircases, halls and big rooms full of statues. The novel deals with various topics, among them being lost and finding oneself. After finishing the novel I did some research on Piranesi and found out that the novel was referring to the Italian Artist G. B. Piranesi, who, among other things, has produced a series with 16 prints called “Imaginary Prisons” in the 18th Century. It is also interesting, that WOTB is a lot older than Clarke’s novel Piranesi, which raises the question how Piranesi might shape newer interpretations of the mention of “Piranesi nightmare” in WOTB.

I see a reoccurring pattern in my chosen quote from WOTB, parts that can be grouped together, namely “Piranesi nightmare”, “steps leading nowhere” and “tortuous staircases opening into doors into nothing’”. All these parts have parallels to the novel Piranesi, where Piranesi, the main protagonist lives in this endless house with infinite rooms and staircases, leading to more rooms, but ultimately to “nothing”. They also resemble a labyrinth, a term that can also be associated with the artist Piranesi. The narrator feels lost in his own mind. This can also be connected to the very first word of the paragraph, “Reason”. It is interesting that the first sentence of the paragraph is just one word. Reason is a powerful word and can both mean an individual reason to do something as well as a greater, more general meaning and question of reason, almost philosophical as in “why do we do things in the way that we do them and why do we decide what we decide”.

What I am really trying to say here is that I think these lines are showing us how overthinking and analyzing can make us feel lost because we try to find a logical explanation for everything, when in reality, not every question has an answer. Reason gives us seemingly comfort, but actually it’s a nightmare, desperately trying to find an explanation for everything, thinking in complicated ways to make sense into things that aren’t supposed to make sense, just to frustratingly end up in “nothing” at the end. If we free ourselves from the urge to bring sense into everything, we free ourselves from this nightmare of a labyrinth, and thereby bring sense into it. The sense is that not everything can be explained with sense. Maybe the nameless narrator of WOTB also feel imprisoned by reason and his own mind.

This pattern of urge toward reason or explanation can also be seen in other parts of the novel, for example is the narrator trying to fight Louise’s cancer with reason, learning as much as they can about it. In the end though, cancer still does not completely make sense, since there often is no logical explanation as to when and why it develops in the body.

Jacqueline and ‘Normal’

“I wanted the clichés, the armchair. I wanted the broad road and twenty-twenty vision. What’s wrong with that? It’s called growing up. Maybe most people gloss their comforts with a patina of romance but it soon wears off. They’re in it for the long haul; the expanding waistline and the little semi in the suburbs. What’s wrong with that? Late-night TV and snoring side by side into the millennium. Till death us do part. Anniversary darling? What’s wrong with that?” (Winterson, 26)

This passage comes at a point in Winterson’s text where the narrator has just met Jacqueline and is trying to decide whether a relationship with her is what she wants and/or needs. Jacqueline is different from anyone the narrator has previously been with: “She worked nine to five Monday to Friday, drove a Mini and got her reading from book clubs. She exhibited no fetishes, foibles, freak-outs or fuck-ups. Above all she was single and she had always been single. No children and no husband” (26). Jacqueline is strikingly normal and mundane, and as the narrator considers their past relationships, they find themself wanting to test the waters of normalcy. They are thinking in circles, considering what they want, what they need, what they should want, and how being with Jacqueline will be different. Deep down, however, they know a relationship with her will never be fulfilling. The repeated question “what’s wrong with that?” clues the reader in to the narrator’s anxieties around long-term commitment and their fear of an unsatisfying relationship, and shows that they are questioning whether they can really be happy with Jacqueline. The narrator seems to be trying to convince themselves that “growing up” and settling into a comfortable, clichéd relationship isn’t actually that bad; however, the way they imagine that relationship reveals a different story, as they describe a loss of romance, growing old with their partner, and having nothing more exciting than late-night TV and anniversaries to look forward to. The relationship becomes stagnant, unchanging, and boring. “What’s wrong with that?” the narrator asks themself. Nothing, except that a stagnant, boring relationship is at odds with what they really want. 

When considering this passage alongside ideas of ‘normal’ and ‘queerness’ as imagined by Warner and Rubin, it becomes apparent that the narrator is trying to reconcile their queerness with the desire to conform to given norms. Though the narrator’s gender and sexuality are never revealed, they fit into several categories in the “outer limits” or “bad/abnormal/unnatural” section of Rubin’s sexual hierarchy. They are unmarried, promiscuous, and their sex life is focused on pleasure rather than procreation; regardless of their gender, they have had relationships with both men and women, and thus can also fit into the category of homosexuality. Jaqueline, on the other hand, seems to fall into more of the “good/normal/natural” categories, though not entirely. Her sexuality is rather complex, as she is introduced as “the mistress of one of [the narrator’s friends] the confidante of both… She traded sex and sympathy for £50 to tide her over the weekend and a square meal on Sunday” (25). She therefore fits the “commercial” and (potentially) “sadomasochistic” categories in Rubin’s sexual hierarchy. Yet the narrator believes a relationship with her will be calm, clichéd, and normal, to the point of boredom. There is no passion between the two of them, and once together, their sex life becomes stagnant (28); it doesn’t seem too much to assume, considering the boredom and lack of romance, that it is private and vanilla as well. The narrator wants to try this calm, mundane kind of relationship with Jacqueline, seeing it and her as a welcome respite from the affairs they have had in the past. The problem is, the narrator is lying to themself on some level. They insist that they want “the clichés, the armchair,” when in reality, they will eventually become bored and frustrated with Jacqueline and her mundanity and leave her, choosing Louise and queerness over Jacqueline and normalcy.

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.

sHE…

I had a boyfriend once, his name was Bruno…he found Jesus under a wardrobe… rescued by the fire brigade…Jesus had come out of the closet to save him. ‘Out of the closet and up into your heart,’ raved the Pastor (152)

The word “boyfriend” captured my attention immediately. I have been so caught up in finding the narrators gender and the gender he/she prefers, and this passage may have solidified my opinion.

For some reason I am seeing Jesus as the narrator himself/herself, slyly talking in first-person. He/she is seemingly stuck under a wardrobe and even hidden in the “closet.” Then, there is a “rescue.” A rescue from himself/herself. A rescue from his/her own sexuality. 

Sexuality is something that can either set you free or suck you in. This passage is the moment of freedom for the Narrator. I find it ever so intriguing that there is two terms that suggest suppression of the Narrator’s true self, and that is the use of the words “[rescue]” and “save.” The imagery used to capture the meaning, feeling and reality of ‘coming out of the closet’ is magnificent, while answering a very frustrating, reoccurring question: what is the gender of the narrator?

Though, the use of Jesus in this passage is so cliché, it ties the fact that ‘God knows everything you do and you do not’ into the plot of the novel. I proposed earlier that the Narrator is using Jesus as a double of himself/herself; he/she “had a boyfriend once” and he/she seemingly came “out of the closet.” I believe he/she is, in fact, a he.

Suppression is prevalent in this passage. Suppression of the gay community. In this instance, he needs to be saved from his sexuality and rescued from his own mind just to find himself?? Ridiculous. He found refuge once the pastor “raved” the truth, “raved” reality and “raved” sanity, that there is nothing more real than what is within your heart and nothing more genuine than love. Once it is found, all bets are off, the “wardrobe” is off and the “closet” is gone. I believe that his passage has made him, himself all the way to the core of his heart, where Jesus is ringing bells of true identity.

One Last Act For The Dead

What would you do? Pass the body into the hands of strangers? The body that has lain beside you in sickness and in health. The body your arms till long for dead or not. You were intimate with every muscle,  privy to the eyelids moving in sleep. This is the body where your name is written, passing into the hands of strangers.

This passage is unusual because the narrator refers to Louise as “the body” because ze is in a cemetery and believes Louise to be dead and cannot bear to refer to Louise as a dead body yet. The narrator also speaks to the reader directly asking, “What would you do? Pass the body into the hands of strangers?” referring to the embalming process before burial and how people used to bury their dead themselves instead of passing them off. The narrator believes the past was more romantic, as a family would take care of their dead as an act of love before burial but now families don’t want to see the dead. Nowadays people fear death, and the narrator is no different, with the slight exception that ze fears more about Louise’s death than zir own. This fear translates into a desire to see Louise again, but ze fears it will only be at Louise’s funeral.

The narrator has also tried to block Louise from zir mind while living outside of London to reduce the pain caused by her diagnosis and imminent death. This is why ze cannot bring zirself to say “Louise’s body” and instead adopts a tone as if ze were addressing the reader and the body the reader longs for, not Louise. The narrator cannot admit that ze longs for Louise and her body nor does ze want to pass Louise off to strangers to prepare her for her death, which is exactly what ze does when ze allows Elgin to attempt to cure her. The narrator is beginning to regret zir decision to leave Louise and realizes that passing a loved one’s body to strangers removes the acts of love one does for the dead. The narrator is trying to reconcile this idea with zir thought processes about leaving Louise because up to now, the narrator truly believed ze had helped Louise by leaving her. In fact, the opposite is true, and the narrator now deeply regrets sending zir lover off to strangers when ze could have stayed with Louise and tried to cure her zirself.

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.

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.