{"id":2644,"date":"2025-02-08T09:43:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T14:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2644"},"modified":"2025-02-08T09:43:15","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T14:43:15","slug":"love-possession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/02\/08\/love-possession\/","title":{"rendered":"Love & Possession"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winterson writes, \u201cLouise, your nakedness was too complete for me, who had not learned the extent of your fingers. How could I cover this land? Did Columbus feel like this on sighting the Americas? I had no dreams to possess you, but I wanted you to possess me\u201d (52).<\/span><\/p>\n

I found it interesting how often Louise\u2019s body and the protagonist\u2019s romance were framed through possession and exploration. This isn\u2019t surprising, given that in our culture, claiming a partner, or being claimed, is often equated with love. It also made me think about love as an act of reclamation, or at least what it\u2019s supposed to be. In Mexican culture, love is deeply tied to the idea of belonging to one another, which in turn reminds me of the not so distant echoes of colonization. The Spanish imposed their God on Indigenous peoples, declaring conversion or death; they imposed marriage, declaring anything outside of it sinful. Love then becomes a cycle of possession.<\/span><\/p>\n

Love it isn\u2019t about control, certainty, or ownership. It has no place for angst or insecure attachment; those are illusions that only distort our perception of what love truly is. Love also isn\u2019t about making decisions for your partner as if they were a child, assuming you know what\u2019s best for them without giving them the chance to express their own desires. That isn\u2019t love, it\u2019s fear disguised as protection. As Gail says, \u201cShe wasn’t a child, you didn’t give her the chance to say what she wanted. You left\u201d (Winterson 159).<\/p>\n

I recently took a course on critical utopias and the human instinct to search beyond borders for a better land, a better reality. In many ways, love can feel utopian, an escape from one\u2019s own limitations. But for Louise\u2019s lover, no matter where they went, despair followed. There was no \u201celsewhere\u201d where they could be different or where they could be free from their own cycles of longing and \u00a0suffering. Did they truly want happiness, or were they more comfortable in longing? At times, it seems as if the protagonist convinces themself that their despair is okay, that the pain of love is its proof. If love is possession, then maybe loss is the ultimate confirmation of love\u2019s existence. Which leads up back to how Winterson begins this novel, “Why is the measure of love loss” (Winterson 9).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winterson writes, \u201cLouise, your nakedness was too complete for me, who had not learned the extent of your fingers. How could I cover this land? Did Columbus feel like this on sighting the Americas? I had no dreams to possess you, but I wanted you to possess me\u201d (52). I found it interesting how often … Continue reading Love & Possession<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2644","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\/2644","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\/5466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}