Now, I want to talk about shame and specifically sexual shame. I find that there are only a few times when the narrator experiences sexual shame, and really this is quite revolutionary. Because the narrator has been in many previous sexual relations and relationships, one would think that immediately they would be stigmatized and shamed by others in the novel. But most of the time, that simply doesn\u2019t happen, at least to our knowledge. Michael Warner talks to great lengths about sexual shame at a personal level. He says, \u201cPerhaps because sex is an occasion for losing control, for merging one\u2019s consciousness with the lower order of animal desire and sensation, for raw confrontations of power and demand, it fills people with aversion and shame,\u201d (Warner, 2). This animalistic instinct is within all of us, yet we\u2019re programmed to suppress it. Written on the Body turns this notion on its head by having a narrator with a ruthless sexual appetite and they seem to experience almost no sexual shame with the amount of relationships they\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n
The only time where the narrator is shamed for her past is with Louise, and even then I\u2019m not sure it could be considered shame. Louise says, \u201cI want you to come to me without a past. Those lines you\u2019ve learned, forget them. Forget that you\u2019ve been here before in other bedrooms in other places. Come to me new. Never say you love me until that day when you have proved it,\u201d (Winterson, 54). Up until this point, the narrator didn\u2019t feel bad about her past relationships. Sure, some of them may have ended poorly, but I don\u2019t believe she ever felt sexually guilty about them. She may have felt shame about hurting another\u2019s feelings, but not about the sexual acts themselves. Louise however, cannot seem to get over these things initially. She tells the narrator to \u201cforget\u201d twice, and to come to her as \u2018new\u201d. This is entirely impossible, as no one can erase the marks and lines of what\u2019s written on your body. Your past gets ingrained into you. It becomes a part of you and who you are. This passage from Louise reflects upon the Warner and society\u2019s ideals of pureness, virginity, and making love with only your soulmate. The novel tries to eradicate that sentiment with the narrator\u2019s actions and mentality, thus asking the world if shame is even really worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Now, I want to talk about shame and specifically sexual shame. I find that there are only a few times when the narrator experiences sexual shame, and really this is quite revolutionary. Because the narrator has been in many previous sexual relations and relationships, one would think that immediately they would be stigmatized and shamed … Continue reading The Absence Of Internal Shame<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2057,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-891","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\/891","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\/2057"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}