Erin King
Abstract
“Why is the measure of love loss?”. Jeanette Winteron’s narrator from Written on the Body asks this question while experiencing beginnings and ends of relationships. This essay provides textual evidence and academic sources to address this specific question, and it will explore how love changes a person, with the loss and gain of it. In this particular case, love changes the narrator from Winterson’s novel, and this essay points out how readers can relate to this character no matter their gender identity. Feminine and masculine expressions of love move away from the strict binary and become fluid in order to present love as universal. Without knowing the narrator’s gender, this love story becomes what love is: universal. The change it does to a person is not restricted by gender roles or stereotypes. The narrator’s past relationships are referenced in contrast to their relationship–the beginning and ending of–with Louise, and this essay amplifies how each experience with love can change and affect a person. This one relationship with Louise differs from the others, and changes the narrator’s perception of love by the end of the novel. Citing analysis from Anna Fåhraeus and Laurie Vickroy, this essay reveals the example Winterson has written that expresses the change love can truly do to a person.
The Androgynous Expression of Love and Loss in Written on the Body
Contemporary relationships nowadays are diverse and fluid, as is sexuality and identity. The expression of gender has been experimented with for an unfathomable amount of time. Looking at a Post-Modernist–nearly contemporary–novel, the notion of fluidity with sexuality
and gender becomes something less foreign than originally thought. Jeanette Winterson portrays a narrator in Written on the Body with no gender identity nor a name to their voice. Love in regards to masculinity and femininity is then expressed in a nuanced way, and changes the main character regardless of their actual gender. This novel provides examples of the true nature of love between people, how it can change a person with the growth of love as well as the loss of love, and the ultimate change love can have on the soul.
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson, as a “love story” is “not presented as ideal” because “the principals are not pure” and the “prime motivator for the narrator’s storytelling is the need to figure out mistakes, reassess past behavior and learn how to give love to another and not just feel its force” (Vickroy 13, 18). As a whole, Winterson’s novel is a realistic account of a complex, imperfect relationship with an ambitious–debatably happy or not–ending. The readers are given snippets of references to the narrator’s past relationships in order to understand who they were before Louise; this ultimately becomes important in understanding the change love does to the narrator. When the narrator has a dream of past lovers, the narrator is swarmed by them as shapes, fueling a dream into a nightmare in which the narrator awakens from after being accused of “lies and betrayal”. They feel like they must have spoken aloud as they woke, which then Louise comforts the narrator and says, “I will never let you go” (Winterson 69). In response to that scene, Vickroy claims the scene includes the narrator recalling their “history of passivity, impulsiveness, fear of commitment, married women, and looking for salvation in romance excess”. It may be read as a turning point for the narrator, a prime example as when a certain love for someone else changes them. While the scene reveals Louise’s heroism according to Vickroy, it also shows the narrator’s “vulnerability and developing sense of regret that could pave the way for a larger and more nuanced relationship with Louise (Vickroy 22). This indeed proves to be true as by the end of the novel the character development the narrator goes through is evident, and they indeed learn the lesson on how to love without force. Vickroy also suggests that the narrator romanticizes Louise, comparing her to “Pre-Raphaelite idealizations of women”. This can be seen as a part of a relationship when two people merge together forming almost an identity that goes hand in hand with one another, which is yet another example of how love changes a person. The narrator wants to love Louise truly, and thinks to themselves: “Oh Louise, I’m not telling the truth. You aren’t threatening me, I’m threatening myself. My careful well-earned life means nothing. The clock was ticking. I thought, How long before the shouting starts? How long before the tears and accusations and the pain? That specific stone in the stomach pain when you lose something you haven’t got round to valuing? Why is the measure of love loss?” (Winterson 39). Remembering their past relationships, and even later on haunted by them, the narrator wants to change and wants to express love truer than they have before, and they want to mean it. So they promise Louise: “Give me time to do the work I must do. Don't make it easy for me. I want to be sure. I want you to be sure” (84). There is a character development here where the narrator takes this relationship seriously. They want to be better and to understand their mistakes, and therefore to love without forcing the emotion to be expressed.
Anna Fåhraeus points out the narrator’s question: “Why is the measure of love loss?” Fåhraeus goes on to assert that the narrator answers their own question, that “experience of love is also the experience of loss” (Fåhraeus 95). It reflects this common notion that you don’t know what you had until you lose it. Loss is a negative feeling while love is positive, however both feelings can actually include both negative (too much love, toxic), and positive (logical loss, natural, death) aspects. The point of the statement though is the experience; love is experienced and not necessarily forever, therefore it will be loss at some point, and not necessarily in a bad way. Fåhraeus goes on to state that “love in Written is an obsession that invades everything one does and in which the loved one becomes part of everything. One abdicates power to the object of desire and at the very basic level of emotion one submits. The narrator writes a story that they see repeat itself where a naked woman tells her lover “when I try to read, it's you I'm reading. When I sit down to eat, it’s you I'm eating” (15) [...] This is loss of self as well as love of another” (95). There’s romantic attention the narrator pays notice to Louise, things lovers generally tend to do. There’s special attention to quirks and body language, as well as their body as it is in the flesh. Vickroy claims “Winterson’s text has made the act of reading a metaphor for loving and feeling and seeing truly”. She urges readers to see that “love and fiction share similar types of understanding: i.e., an imagined and sympathetic identification with an other’s experience, and to see their humanity on their own terms, even if our interpretations may be clouded by our own perspectives” (25). This relates to the reason why the narrator’s gender is concealed. This love story works to be relatable as it expresses complex, human characteristics associated with the binary genders and refuses to categorize them accordingly. As stated in the beginning of the novel, “Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard” (9). Even cliches apply to anyone regardless of gender. “Love is blind. All you need is love. [...] Nobody ever died from a broken heart. You’ll get over it.” (10) This novel portrays a postmodern-early contemporary look at the realism of relationships, how identity changes as a relationship progresses, and how love “invades everything” (Fåhraeus 95).
The narrator reflects on love throughout the novel. They think, “no one knows what forces draw two people together. There are plenty of theories: astrology, chemistry, mutual need, biological drive. Magazines and manuals worldwide will tell you how to pick the perfect partner” (96). Love is universal. Picking the perfect partner in the twenty-first century allows
people to be picky; however there is also love in ordinary, chance encounters. A chance encounter suggests the question of “what are the chances” that two people meet and fall in love. It is questioned a lot in relationships; one might be happy in a relationship they’ve never felt before and wonder, is it too good to be true? In the beginning of Written, the narrator’s partner says, “There’s nobody here but us.” (11). This moment emphasizes the relationship that it is just between “us”, no one else. No one knows how complex a relationship between people is; strangers and people outside the relationship only see the surface, and they don’t see what goes on behind closed doors or under the sheets. Vickroy asserts that “Love can be an excellent framework for self-analysis, testing whether we are ethical individuals who are able to think of others on their own terms or whether our ideas of love partake mostly of fantasy and self-interest and not a substantial commitment to a real, flawed person.” (15). Love tests people and what kind of compromises, promises, and devotions each can take or will not take. The narrator is kind of put through a test, manipulated to end their relationship with Louise so Louise can get medical treatment (an example of not what love really is by Elgin, risking his wife’s health in order to “keep” her to himself). In their letter to Louise, the narrator writes wholeheartedly: “I love you more than life itself. I have not known a happier time than with you. I did not know this much happiness was possible. Can love have texture? It is palpable to me, the feeling between us, I weigh it in my hands the way I weigh your head in my hands. I hold on to love as a climber does a rope.” (105). This letter expresses love as something worth more than life, but not in the same sense as Elgin; the narrator wants Louise to live even if they say they love her more than life, they don’t love her more than her own life. Vickroy continues by deciding that the point of the novel Written is “the nature of love, its value, its expression, and the ethics of participants’ behavior, particularly in the ways the characters deal with one another and the important role of honesty and communication. Love provides an excellent topic for the consideration of ethical dilemmas of human action, and is one important means to consider defining ethics as how responsible and attentive we should be to one another” (15). Love lost is losing a connection with someone that has grown to be a part of you. Being in love changes people, so once the love is gone, the person cannot be the person they are nor can they be the person they were before. The only option is to move forward, further change, and possibly become a person different from when they were in love. The narrator changed from before they loved Louise and to after, even though they still love Louise, the relationship was over. Whether or not Louise actually appears in the end or is part of the narrator’s imagination is debated, Vickroy points out that a change does occur in the narrator’s character: they now know love can be successful (21).
In Vickroy’s article, she discusses the questions of the narrator’s gender identity in Written. She says, “if readers hold off their expectations and follow the narrative path offered, that is, to reconsider prescriptions of gender and how they formulate out ideas of identity and love, they might reconsider why we must know the narrator’s gender, why should love be thought of as different for men and women, and how this might frame our sense of meaning in a text. Readers are asked to resituate themselves from being gender-bound readers (14). Readers do not need to know the gender of the narrator; the character is related with characteristics associated with both binary genders. What Vickroy claims readers will gain and lose by omitting gender from a character, is that “the broader ethical issues around love–what it is (and is not) and the sacrifices involved in it–figure more largely than gender identity in this text. By downplaying gender, the author can encompass a greater range of human reactions that have been heretofore restrictedly gender inflected: passivity, aggression, violence, sexual hunger, sexual adventures, etc. If readers keep the narrator’s gender “under advisement” or hold their judgement while they figure out what the narrative is asking them to think about, they can consider love and identity through multiple lenses and not be confined by their own prejucdes about either sex. (15) Love is very much human and taking away the gender aspect heavily suggests everyone, regardless of gender, can express love in varying ways, even if those expressions are not assumingly part of the gender a person identifies to. The narrator without a stated, explicit gender therefore challenges “staid, mainstream, heterosexist ideas of love and commitment and the ways we categorize, institutionalize, commodify and domesticate love (Vickroy 16). The narrator acknowledges the “emotional chaos” love can create: “I was hopelessly in love with Louise and very scared. [...] I don’t want to be fated, I want to choose.” (Vickroy 16; Winterson 91) Gender does not necessarily change the outcome in this novel; to the reader this person is experiencing love and without knowing the gender, the reader can ignore any biases that come up. Ultimately, the gender of the narrator is never revealed: this “demands the readers [to] look beyond the lens of one gender. It’s a rhetorical stance, attempting to invite readers to take a broader than usual position on the topic. Numerous romantic escapades and uncertaitniy about the narrator provoke readers to test out what these episode might mean to both sexes and numerous possible sexual orientations. Readers become obliged in some way to reconsider relationships from multiple perspectives through this device. Resistance to patriarch, castration anxiety, and violence are all brought up and deconstructed in some manner.” (14). Fåhraeus reminds us that the narrator “reads playboy and women’s magazines; pees standing up and sitting down. They draws hunting analogies and war analogies but also eats when depressed, grows flowers and buys them for ‘herself’. The narrator engages in physical violence with women (Inge) and men (Elgin), actions [interpreted] as masculine.” When the narrator talks about emotions, that is classified as feminine.” (89). This character is given traits that any one can relate to in some way, which allows the reader to experience love from a different perspective. Vickroy also expresses this point, pointing out that Winterson “urges readers to see that “love and fiction share similar types of understanding”, and to feel sympathetic to other people’s experiences, even if our interpretations may be clouded by our own perspectives” (25). Readers are going to try to guess the gender or believe the narrator is one or the other based on their own deductions and biases, which is not inherently wrong: they are choosing what parts of the narrator to relate to and quite possibly applying their gender identity to the narrator in order to relate to even more.
Written on the Body is a showcase of how love can change someone. The narrator’s reflections on past relationships and application to their relationship to Louise elaborates the change, and allows the reader to witness and experience this love without gender bias interfering. Expressions of love and the change it does to a person is not exclusive to gender identity. Love is universal; it is expressed in cliches, critiqued and parodied, and it is also explored and analyzed. This novel is just one example of the humanity love has to offer to people.
Works Referenced
Fåhraeus, Anna. “Embattled Subjects: The Role of Textual Masculinity in Written on the Body.” Nordic journal of English studies : NJES, vol. 7, no. 1, 2008, p. 81, doi:10.35360/njes.75.
Vickroy, Laurie. "Reading the Other: Love and Imagination In “Written on the Body”.” CEA critic, vol. 71, no. 1, 2008, pp. 12-26. Print.
Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body, Jonathan Cape, London, 1992. Print.
Biography
Erin King received her B.A. in English, also from CSUF in 2018. She loves to read romance and poetry, and her interests lie in Victorian and early Modernism literature, although she also leans towards some postmodernism and contemporary works.
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