{"id":2632,"date":"2025-02-07T22:01:50","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T03:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2632"},"modified":"2025-02-07T22:01:50","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T03:01:50","slug":"the-thrill-of-the-forbidden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/02\/07\/the-thrill-of-the-forbidden\/","title":{"rendered":"The Thrill of the Forbidden"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I was reading Jeanette Winterson’s\u00a0Written On the Body\u00a0<\/em>I was immediately struck by a passage on page 72 reading, “We don’t take drugs, we’re drugged out on danger, where to meet, when to speak, what happens when we see each other publicly. We think no-one has noticed but there are always faces at the curtain, eyes on the road. There’s nothing to whisper about so they whisper about us.”(Winterson, 72). I’ll admit, at first I was struck by this passage because it reminded me of the Taylor Swift song\u00a0illicit affairs.\u00a0<\/em>Similar to that song, this passage really speaks to why people have affairs. This line draws a direct parallel between the thrill of drugs and the thrill of cheating. There is a certain excitement that comes from something forbidden, regardless of that it is. The narrator also addresses the high of communicating with an affair partner in public, which adds a whole other layer to the thrill.<\/p>\n

This passage continues on to discuss who even though the narrator is seeking a thrill of getting away with something, they’re really not. The affair may be a secret from Jacqueline’s partner, but something about the way they are together makes in clear there is something wrong about their relationship. It also speaks to the slight narcissism of the narrator, as they believe they are getting away with this affair, but might not actually be.<\/p>\n

This passage speaks to the overall theme of infidelity in the novel. When I read books I use sticky tabs to mark passages I want to remember. I use the same colors to mean the same things in every book, but sometimes I add another color for something specific to that book. In\u00a0Written On The Body<\/em> I’ve been using a tab for infidelity. At this point in the story it’s been established that the narrator has a thing for married women. But this is one of the first moments where we start to understand why. The narrator not only falls for these women, but also enjoys the thrill of an affair. The narrator is an addict in their own right, but they get high off forbidden loves and encounters instead of drugs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I was reading Jeanette Winterson’s\u00a0Written On the Body\u00a0I was immediately struck by a passage on page 72 reading, “We don’t take drugs, we’re drugged out on danger, where to meet, when to speak, what happens when we see each other publicly. We think no-one has noticed but there are always faces at the curtain, … Continue reading The Thrill of the Forbidden<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-class-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632","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\/5359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}