{"id":1905,"date":"2022-09-15T12:21:04","date_gmt":"2022-09-15T16:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1905"},"modified":"2022-09-15T12:21:04","modified_gmt":"2022-09-15T16:21:04","slug":"the-blame-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2022\/09\/15\/the-blame-game\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blame Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAdultery is as much about disillusionment as it is about sex. The charm didn\u2019t work. You paid all that money, ate the cake and it didn\u2019t work. It\u2019s not your<\/em> fault, is it?\u201d (78).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This quote, from Jeanette Winterson\u2019s Written on the Body<\/em>, contains two of the central themes of the novel. Commitment, and responsibility. The meat of the quotation is spent discussing marriage, an institution built on commitment, and always tied to a breaking of that commitment in the narrator\u2019s experience. As is clear from their description of \u201cpay[ing] all the money, [eating] the cake\u201d the narrator views marriage as only its traditional, shallow, commercial parts, with the use of \u201ccharm\u201d implying a sort of magic ritual, an act towards the production or achievement of a fantastical goal.<\/p>\n

Focusing more on the third sentence, the narrator lists these traditional, shallow planning choices as boxes to be checked off, putting the focus of marriage on its physical elements rather than emotional ones. The disillusionment comes when these physical aspects do not change the emotional ones. The last line of this quotation is the most important. Once resigned to disillusionment, the disappointment turns to blame. Twice in the quotation does the narrator reference the self directly, \u201cyou<\/em> ate the cake, you<\/em> spent that money\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s not your<\/em> fault, is it\u201d However the self is absent when discussing \u201cthe<\/em> charm\u201d failing. Adultery is the inevitable result, the product of some failure beyond your control. To the narrator, responsibility is foreign, and this quote shows that. None of the failures have to be their fault if the magic of marriage independently failed. There is no internal problem to address, no personal flaw, because \u201cthe charm\u201d just didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

The narrator has disconnected their awareness from their actions, living in a place of technical innocence, pondering the inner wound they feel and fill with partners they will never assume responsibility for. Keeping just far enough from these women that they don\u2019t hold emotional weight, already committed to another, yet close enough that they will relieve the narrator\u2019s loneliness on the most superficial level. And when the superficial no longer fills them the way it once did, they can comfort themselves saying, its not my fault.<\/p>\n

However, Winterson doesn\u2019t write this last sentence as a statement, but rather as a question. \u201cIs it?\u201d. While this question could be read as indignation, it could just as easily be read as a demonstration of the narrator\u2019s inner conflict, and the start of their self-reflection. A genuine question, as well as an insecurity. They feel failed by commitment because they fail at commitment but cannot fathom themselves at fault. The problem must be institutional, their failure must be out of their control. During their discussion of fading feelings, they site a natural circadian clock of love, removing blame once again, however doubt is evident in their subconscious if nothing else. The question is sincere, and they are desperate for a reassuring answer despite all odds. They spend most of the novel discussing the emotional wreckage they leave behind, wondering why without stating the obvious common factor in all of it. It\u2019s not their fault. Isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAdultery is as much about disillusionment as it is about sex. The charm didn\u2019t work. You paid all that money, ate the cake and it didn\u2019t work. It\u2019s not your fault, is it?\u201d (78).   This quote, from Jeanette Winterson\u2019s Written on the Body, contains two of the central themes of the novel. Commitment, and … Continue reading The Blame Game<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4991,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169404],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2022-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905","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\/4991"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}