Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body: Examination of Love
Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body, is an artistically written examination of love. The plot line, however cliched, is not the point. Winterson does a masterful job of allowing us to skip gender labels, and contemplate love at a level of depth that most of us never reach. The two elements that redeem this novel from its threatened triteness is the author's refreshing vagueness regarding gender, and her unique insights into the deepest elements of compassionate love. A more obscure theme is one which implies that the truly profound, intimate love that we seek is parental in nature.Out of weariness from failed relationships, the narrator (who I am identifying as a man for this paper) decides to settle for a safe-harbor relationship with someone he does not love, but who can provide him with some semblance of what he considers a normal home life. Jacqueline is a zoo worker - a nurturer. What she offers him is a maternal kind of comfort, which is what he is really seeking, to soothe his jangled emotions. The narrator drops hints of his parent-child relationship with Jacqueline: "It was Jacqueline's job to make everything bright and shiny again." "She was good with me." "Jacqueline made me a sandwich and asked if I
" "What am I? I feel like a kid in the examination room faced with a paper I can't complete. What could be more intensely comfortable than being rocked with love, and hiding under a mother's protective skirt? Another passage in the section of the book where the narrator has begun to methodically explore the absent Louise's body in his imagination, he likens himself to a nursing child, saying:Rescue me. I am a creature who feeds at your hand" (124). " "She never bothered me when I said, 'Don't bother me,' and she didn't cry when I shouted at her. Had I ever been kissed before? I as shy as an unbroken colt(81)"He puts his arms around her not sure if he is lover or child, reflecting the sheer vulnerability of being so intimate with another person, and of so openly wanting another person, like a child gesturing toward its mother. " References to the soothing comfort of rocking and hiding beneath her skirts illustrate the narrator's perceived link between sexual love and maternal love. " Although not contiguous, these phrases consistently reveal the narrator's understanding of the adult longing for mom. Though the primary thrust of Winterson's story is the sexually-charged passion between two people who genuinely love one another, the narrator implies that sexual love has many facets, one of them being our parent-child longing. Winterson freely uses symbolism recklessly and at times, injudiciously. Its mediocrity lies in its somewhat tired plot and not-so-subtle attempt to be a work of art. Examples are her use of the color red throughout the book, reminding us blatantly that red symbolizes passion, wildness and sin (she does use Biblical references, as well). In each instance of the narrator's painful loss of a relationship, it is he who has caused its destruction and, in the end, decides to terminate the ultimate relationship, which is the one with himself. Its brilliance is in its narrator's undefined gender.
Common topics in this essay:
Jacqueline Jacqueline's,
Rescue Swing,
Written Body,
Discussion Questions,
Louise Louise's,
beneath skirts,
lover child,
arms lover,
arms lover child,
hide beneath skirts,
beneath skirts menace,
skirts menace,
sexual love,
hide beneath,
book simple,
sharp desire,
written body,
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Acceptance Essays
