38 pages • 1 hour read
Jeanette WintersonWritten On The Body
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 50-95Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 50-74 Summary
The narrator declares love for Louise; Louise replies that she doesn’t want to “be another scalp on your pole” (53) and speculates that the narrator’s declaration of love is a way of gaining control. Having heard stories of all the narrator’s previous sexual escapades, Louise wants the “script,” and the past, to be forgotten.
Aware that the relationship with Jacqueline must end, the narrator waits for her to exit the zoo. Jacqueline asks, “Is this about Louise?” (56), but the narrator will only admit that “things had changed” (57). When the narrator attempts to present the state of their relationship and its outcome as a “joint decision,” Jacqueline retorts by saying that this means they will discuss it and “you’ll do what you want anyway” (58). Jacqueline walks away, and the narrator diverges into a reminiscence of an old girlfriend, Catherine, and their habit of peering into the living room windows of strangers in the evening, watching the inertia that sets into most lives after 7:00 p.m. The narrator notes the power of memory to temporarily abate the starkness of reality.
Jacqueline locks the narrator out of their flat, resulting in another night spent at Louise’s house, during which Louise insists upon separate bedrooms, provides a hot bath, and behaves maternally. Louise discusses her disappointment in her husband, who had started his career with the desire to treat people in third-world countries. When his estranged mother, Sarah, was diagnosed with bone cancer, Elgin shifted to gene therapy cancer research and now spends all his time doing highly paid pharmaceutical research. Their marriage is a sham; she refuses to have sex with him and is aware that he uses prostitutes. The narrator sleeps with Louise once more and analyzes Louise’s style of lovemaking: “It was necessary to engage her whole person” (68).
Upon returning home, the narrator finds that Jacqueline has vandalized their flat, ripping pillows, emptying drawers, and removing virtually anything of value, including furniture and electronics. When using the toilet, the narrator realizes that Jacqueline has written lists of her good qualities and the narrator’s negative characteristics on the bathroom walls, and has written on the bathroom doors with fecal material.
The narrator again reflects on the narrator’s history of love affairs and the fact that the narrator has never been the spurned lover waiting at home for the late return of a beloved. The narrator recalls an unnamed past lover who called her spouse immediately after having sex with the narrator and makes small talk about the weather. The narrator remembers the woman in bed, waiting for the sun to break “open the dull colds of her soul where nothing has warmed her for more summers than she can count” (73). The narrator speculates that the husband will feel sorry for his wife, who appears exhausted upon returning from her business conference.
The narrator then ruminates on women’s magazines found in dentist’s waiting rooms. These texts advise wives about the telltale signs of infidelity on the part of husbands: new underwear and aftershave. Conversely, wives are more discreet and avoid obvious new purchases. They are more likely to use evening classes as excuses or have extramarital affairs in the afternoons when they are at work. The narrator wonders whether this is the reason that so many women have chosen careers.
Pages 75-95 Summary
The narrator thinks about Judith, a former lover who was a botanical gardens employee and “could only achieve orgasm between the hours of two and five o’clock” (75) in the afternoon. They had sex in the garden hothouse, and later, an argument results in the narrator being locked out of the hothouse in the snow while attired only in a “Mickey Mouse one-piece” (75). Upon their return home, the narrator contacts Judith to arrange to the retrieval of the narrator’s possessions, only to be advised that the items have been burnt. This act of vengeance leads the narrator to reflect on the act of collecting of material goods.
The narrator considers the trajectory of past love affairs, noting that “I’m addicted to the first six months” (76) and equating an eventual feeling of “contentment” to that of being numbed during a visit to the dentist. There follows a reflection upon the concepts of fidelity and cheating, the non-negotiable nature of love, and the narrator’s sense that “marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire” (78).
The narrator reflects that the narrator’s relationship with Louise produces an unlikely combination of shyness and bravado, together with a feeling of déjà vu, as if the pair had known each other for decades. When Louise advises the narrator that she has alerted her husband, Elgin, to their love affair, she asks the narrator whether she should leave her spouse; the narrator responds, “Shall we see how we go?” (83).
Jacqueline lets herself into the narrator’s flat and attempts to assault Louise with a shard of glass. The narrator defends Louise and slaps Jacqueline across the face, subsequently weeping in remorse over “another failed relationship” (87).
The narrator considers the nature of a trefoil knot, noting that knots have religious, mathematical, and artistic qualities. The narrator recounts a medieval Italian custom of fastening fighters together with a strong rope until one had beaten the other to death: “The victor kept the rope and tied a knot in it” (88).
Louise and the narrator spend a raucous evening of lovemaking at Louise’s house, unaware that Elgin has returned home early from a trip. The trio eat an uncomfortable breakfast together the following morning, and Louise advises the narrator that she needs three days to gather her thoughts. Terrified, the narrator envisions Louise abandoning their relationship for her marriage to Elgin, noting, “[n]o-one whom Louise had loved could be worthless” (92).
The narrator then recalls a former boyfriend known as “Crazy Frank,” who “had the body of a bull” (93) and had been adopted by midgets. Frank loved his adopted parents deeply and took them everywhere, but he believed that romantic love was only a ruse. The narrator was heartbroken but discourses on the idea that “sex can feel like love” (94).
The narrator awaits Louise’s decision about the future of their relationship. Upset and unable to concentrate on completing translating work, the narrator sits bound to a chair in the British Library Reading Room in an effort to enforce self-discipline; this act results in a citation and banishment from the library, a decision that the narrator will appeal.
Pages 50-95 Analysis
The narrator continues to alternate between descriptions of sexual obsession with Louise and anecdotal memories of past love affairs, merging the theme of marriage and fidelity with a discussion of the symbolic significance of the human body. The fear of domestic tedium the narrator escapes by deliberately sabotaging a conventional, albeit boring relationship with Jacqueline ends with an uncharacteristically retaliatory and explosive reaction from the young woman. The narrator notes that a “sensible” relationship is the equivalent of setting a “time-bomb under yourself” (97). Indeed, there is an ongoing textual sense that constant interaction with the loved one degrades the tantalizing aspects of a romantic relationship.
This section of the text highlights the connections between the body and emotion. Metaphors related to the physical aspects of romantic love abound, emphasizing the theme of the significance of the human body in a sexual context; for example, Louise’s body is described as an “undiscovered land” (52). The physical impact of emotionality is explored further when the narrator asks Louise, “Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons?” (89). The idea of romance marking the body is also evident in the narrator’s notion of messages written on the body and visible only in certain lights.
The narrator also expresses an interest in both physical and emotional mortality. Regarding the death of Elgin’s mother, Sarah, due to bone cancer, the narrator notes, “She must have been in pain for years. Slowly crumbling, dust to dust” (65). In an interesting juxtaposition within a text largely devoted to the description of sexual experiences, the narrator paraphrases Biblical imagery pertaining to mortality from the book of Genesis. Further anatomical interests unrelated to sex are found in the description of Elgin’s research into gene therapy as related to cancer treatments, as opposed to his original interest in practicing medicine in Third World countries. Louise describes her husband’s switch to “sexy medicine” and its lucrative rewards, as opposed to his originally altruistic concerns.
Brief glimpses of the narrator’s professional life as a translator of scholarly works reinforces the symbolic importance of language, linguistics, and writing. The narrator also considers various forms of embodied communication, such as sign language (“Articulacy of fingers, the language of the deaf and dumb, signing on the body longing” (89)) and Morse code (“You tap a message onto my skin, tap meaning into my body” (89)). These reflections connect back to the physical impact of romantic love; the narrator notes that her lover’s “Morse Code interferes with my heart beat” (89). The narrator will later state that Louise physically marks the narrator with her teeth on the outside and “tattoos me on the inside” (118).
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