{"id":860,"date":"2016-02-12T08:16:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T13:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=860"},"modified":"2016-02-12T08:16:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T13:16:54","slug":"beyond-the-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2016\/02\/12\/beyond-the-body\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Body"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece\u201d (190). <\/span><\/p>\n

The closing paragraph of <\/span>Written on the Body <\/span><\/i>is starkly different from the rest of the novel, which focuses overwhelmingly on bodies and the effect of language on the body. If the passage above does actually describe Louise\u2019s return, and I believe that it does, then the narrator\u2019s lack of focus on Louise\u2019s body is startling in the context of their obsessive attempt to learn and possess her body throughout the rest of the novel.<\/span><\/p>\n

The final passage reveals that \u201cthe story\u201d is not in fact written on Louise\u2019s body, as the title of the novel suggests. Rather, it starts in \u201cthis threadbare room,\u201d which rapidly transforms: walls \u201cexploding,\u201d \u00a0windows turning into telescopes, the sun descending to rest above the mantelpiece. The room\u2019s extraordinary transformation is at once an expansion and a condensation; while the walls explode, and the windows would need to expand outward in order to become telescopes, the moon and stars seem to have come into the room, where they are \u201cmagnified,\u201d and the sun too now exists indoors. It would seem that the room has either expanded to accommodate the newly descended universe or that the universe has coalesced in a single room. The passage does not provide any clarification, and the paradoxical nature of the description works well as a means of understanding how the narrator\u2019s understanding of love has transformed throughout the novel.<\/p>\n

On the previous page the narrator asks Gail, \u201cWhat else is embossed on your hands but her?\u201d (189). The question captures the narrator\u2019s previously narrow perspective on their relationship with Louise. The narrator was focused only on Louise\u2019s effect on their body, was unable to recognize Louise herself. After Louise\u2019s return, however, the narrator is able to look past their own body and Louise\u2019s body and to recognize the significance of their relationship. All of the physical marks that Louise has left on the narrator\u2019s body diminish in comparison to the universe that she has brought with her return. At the end of the novel, we see that the narrator has learned to look beyond Louise\u2019s physical self and has fully recognized not her body, but the world that they inhabit together.<\/p>\n

While the passage seems to deviate from the title and major themes of <\/span>Written on the Body<\/span><\/i>, I\u2019m inclined to understand it as an illustration of the narrator having\u00a0finally learning to apply the text that Louise has written on their body as a means of understanding the full scope of their\u00a0relationship. Louise is no longer the only one translating and creating language. The narrator has also learned to translate something other than Russian literature, and can consequently step back from their intense focus on the body in order to appreciate the world that they inhabit alongside Louise. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece\u201d (190). The closing paragraph of Written on the Body is starkly different from the rest of the novel, which focuses overwhelmingly … Continue reading Beyond the Body<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3012,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","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\/3012"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}