Excerpts from reflections I wrote for "Gender, Bodies, and the Medical Establishment":"One of the first things that struck me upon reading Written on the Body (besides the fact that the narrator—and possibly Winterson herself—is totally fat-phobic) is that the narrator’s love for Louise is almost completely situated upon her body. Which is fine and exciting until the story is complicated by other bodies, like Gail’s, which the narrator finds distasteful. It is then on us as readers to begin a critique of what kinds of assumptions the narrator/Winterson makes about what a beautiful/normal body looks like.The other thing that struck me was that Winterson uses a lot of colonial language in this book. The narrator is constantly comparing Louise’s body to a territory to be discovered, mapped out, conquered. “Louise, 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?” (52) In fact, the narrator seems to posit all bodies as intended for eventual possession. The conflation of love/lust with this kind of language is really weird and kind of messed up—is this Winterson’s idea of ideal love?I found myself continuously shifting my idea of the gender of the narrator; Winterson gives little hints which pushed me in one direction of thinking or the other—but then I realized that I was basing all this on really stereotypical and constructed gender stereotypes anyway, and I had to fight hard to try and think of someone with fluid gender, or no gender at all, as the narrator.""As I was thinking more about Written on the Body, I tried to focus even more on Winterson’s language, because it seems that above all (including the plot) is her own focus. She repeats certain phrases/themes throughout the novel; one of the more obvious ones is about clichés: “It’s the clichés that cause the trouble,” she points out on page 10 (and then 5 more times throughout the novel). As we examine the rest of her language use, however, it seems impossible not to be struck by her reliance on clichés about love and desire. Her writing is so intertextual (she references the Bible, The Tempest, the love between Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson, just to name a few) that every reference in the service of representing love strikes us as old hat. Is she poking fun at herself, or even the language of love itself? Is her use of these time-worn clichés simply a way to foreground the intertextuality of her piece, a way to prod the reader into realizing that all of language is essentially clichéd, all doomed to be simply repeated?What is love in this novel? The very first line sets the tone for us: “Why is the measure of love loss?” the narrator asks (9). One immediately gets the sense that love is completely tied up in desire, and desire is naturally tied up in loss, because desire cannot exist without a lack of something—that something we don’t have which we want. It would be interesting to do a Lacanian psychoanalytic reading of the way in which Louise represents the narrator’s mirror image. The narrator constantly invokes the idea that s/he are two parts of one whole, or the reflections of each other, or the same person. “…I turn a corner and recognise myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know” (120). But there is still that disjunction between narrator and Louise as reflection; Louise is not something which the narrator can be or possess or get back to—she must always desire her, from start to finish, because she can never have her."
Books read at an impressionable age always leave you astounded. You cannot get more of them. You reread them at various stages in life and if it manages to evoke similar feelings in you, like the first time, then the book maybe is meant for you. Few books fit into this category. Fewer books make it there from the hundreds and thousands of books we read in a lifetime. It is almost like a personal treasure – this small collection that touches you every time you pick any book from it. For me, a lot of books fit into this, and “Written on the Body” by Jeanette Winterson is one of them.I read this book for the first time when I was just about to come out to my family. It is one of those books which will always be close to my heart. It somehow gave me the required courage to do what I did. I don’t know how, but it did and at that time, it mattered the world to me. It made me want to go up to Ms. Winterson and let her know how much I loved her book and how grateful I was to her for writing it. Books do that. Any art form does. Anything that can manage to touch you to that extent.“Written on the Body” is a love story as most of Ms. Winterson’s books. It is a meditation on love and desire. It is about how maybe love sustains itself no matter what the odds. It is everything to do with extraordinary passion and unrequited love at its worst. It is about the body – every single part of it, every pore of the skin, every surface that the beloved touches. The book is narrated by a nameless and genderless being about his or her love for a married woman named Louise. The book talks of their affair, their love, their desire and the betrayal by the body.Winterson’s writing is beyond magical. She knows which nerve to touch on, which emotion to carry through, which rawness to portray that makes the reader wonder about his or her life. She speaks of how lovers know each other’s bodies. How they know every scar, every detail, every birthmark, every crevice of the body and how love gets to those places. The book is unusual in its narrative, however once you get the hang of it, you will not let go of it. The prose is lyricism at its best. Winterson’s expressions and her details about love and the lovers are not to be missed. The book is clever as well, but above all it is about the nature of love and how we do not give up on the lover, even if the love is doomed.
What do You think about Written On The Body (1994)?
Oh, Jeanette Winterson, I do try to love you. But Written on the Body doesn't have much to hang on to except Winterson's prose, her brilliant imagery. It's like sinking into a warm bath of words, because she really does know how to use them.But then the bath water gets cold and you have to get out.Really, that's how I felt about Written on the Body. I like the neutral gender of the narrator-protagonist, and I like the intimacy of reading the book, the confessional nature of it.But I don't even want to keep this one to read my favourite passages later.
—Nikki
This book contains one of my favorite passages of all time; here's a little excerpt:"When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.... When I say 'I will be true to you' I must mean it in spite of the formalities, instead of the formalities. If I commit adultery in my heart then I have lost you a little. The bright vision of your face will blur. I may not notice this once or twice, I may pride myself on having enjoyed those fleshy excursions in the most cerebral way. Yet I will have blunted that sharp flint that sparks between us, our desire for one another above all else."
—Renee
I was reading thru some of the reviews for this book. I'll just say that it's beautifully written. This book moved me. I cried with about twenty pages to go. My heart expanded and ached a little bit. I felt for the narrator (who we have to guess woman or man?) and for Louise. I love the narrator. This book is about love, relationships, loss, and is a bit hope filled at the end. The opening sentence: Why is the measure of love loss? and the book takes you from there. I finished it in a day. Not a lot of pages and would have finished it in just 3-4 hours had it not been for it's language lending itself to my own experiences in relationships and thoughts about love. One third of the way in I wanted to start over so I wouldn't be so near the end. At times I had to stop reading and go out and sit in the sun, put my feet in the grass, listen to the rustle of a tree in our backyard. I saw a hummingbird. A dragonfly. The reading of this book was competing with nature all day. Only when the day settled could I concentrate enough to finish it up. All in all, my life is richer for having read this book.
—Evan
