\u201cWritten on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn\u2019t know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book\u201d (89).<\/p>\n
Winterson describes the body as a palimpsest, a manuscript so worked over that the original text gets erased or covered to make way for new texts. This might connect to how Winterson tells the story. The narrator has a new story being written with Louise, but the \u201cold text\u201d of past relationships still appears both in the narrator\u2019s recollection, but also their repeated patterns. These repeated patterns might relate to the visible traces of past writing on the manuscript that this the body, the remnants of the same tale. These visible traces of the narrator\u2019s experience cause repeated patterns, they enter into a second relationship with a married woman when they begin their affair with Louise, but they had promised not to make that mistake after Bathsheba. But the old text shines through, and the narrator falls into old habits. The writing changes, in the narrator\u2019s case, the writing on the body changes the most with their relationships. The palimpsest can also contain drawings, \u201cI 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\u201d (pg 20). So, the new writing on the narrator\u2019s body and their experience with Louise covers and writes over their experience with Jacquelin or Frank or Inge. Additionally, the concept of the body as a palimpsest, rather than a simple book or poem, is important. While in many ways, this seems like a minute difference, it is a critical one. In normal books or essays, you never see the draft, you only see the finished product. But the body is a palimpsest, the old text that came before might fade, or might be scrubbed away, but traces remain. Your past experiences don\u2019t go away. This connects to Sedgwick\u2019s idea of survival. We survive into our experience, not through or past it. The affects are lifelong, even if we gain new experiences. Considering the body as palimpsest, where your life and experience is written on your body, in your skin can help us understand identity. Winterson gives the narrator very few defining characteristics, the narrator has no gender, we don\u2019t know their age, and their occupation is vague. What we as readers do know, is the narrator\u2019s experience. The moments that are written on their body. This provides a different way of defining and describing our identities. They encompass more than our gender, our age, who we love or don\u2019t love, or what our jobs are. Our identities are greatly shaped by our experiences, how we heal from them or grow because of them. We can use this idea to further our understanding of identity and how to write and explain it. While words used to describe identity: sexual or gender orientation, age, nationality, and others are useful, experience can provide deeper insight into our identities and how they blend with our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWritten on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I … Continue reading The Palimpsest<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4457,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}