Have you ever been in love? Take a moment to think about it. Although entirely rhetorical in its asking, this is a very important question to think about before one picks up ‘Written on The Body‘. The opening line of Winterson’s novel strikes a deep chord with the almost philosophical enigma; ‘Why is the measure of love loss?’.
‘Written on The Body‘ will compel you to fall in love, force you to relive it if you once knew it, make you treasure it if you have it, and make you question returning to it if you lost it. I myself have been in love with the book for some time now. It is a text that will remind you what it feels like to fall into that hazy, elated state of being that we call ‘love’, and how we never truly fall out of it.
However, Winterson’s greatest feat is perhaps that she does all of this without alluding to the speakers gender once throughout the whole text. Who is this person that has taken men and women as lovers? Are they a man? Are they a woman? This soon becomes irrelevant as Wintersons use of language and imagery completely transports us to a place where convention soon falls away, and imagery of passionate lovers and fond memories takes its place. In bypassing the accepted norm of a gendered narrator, Winterson engages with the reader on a much more emotional level, dealing with intimacy and personal relationships without the trappings of gender stereotypes. We feel as though it could be us loving Louise (the speakers ultimate love) through the words of the narrator.
The true madness and obsession of love is mapped accurately by Winterson towards the middle of the book. The speaker declares his love for Louise by charting every part of her body, every orifice, right down to her bone marrow. The narrator researches the human body, in an attempt to know Louise as best they can while they are separated. While researching the human sense of hearing they write: ‘Sound waves travel at about 335 metres a second. That’s about a fifth of a mile and Louise is perhaps two hundred miles away. If I shout now, she’ll hear me in seventeen minutes or so. I have to leave a margin of error for the unexpected. She may be swimming underwater‘.
The intimacy shared by the two characters can be truly recognised through Winterson’s use of language, and felt in every syllable. ‘You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message onto my skin, tap meaning into my body‘. As a reader I could not help myself; I was completely sucked in. I was buying what Winterson was selling. As someone who would say they are in love now, this feeling was totally familiar to me. Who was I before I was in love? How did I cope without the tenderness of my lovers touch before now? How did I cope before I had my own body written upon by warm hands?
‘Written on The Body‘ cannot tell you what love is, but it will doubtless remind you of what you have if you have it, or of what you left behind.
10/10
