Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg
PS: "Other Sexes": Female Identity in English and American Texts

Sommersemester 2001

Desire and Disease In Jeanette Winterson′s Written on the Body

by

Nicole Steurer

Contents: 

1. Introduction 3

2. Desire 3
2.1 Desire in theory 3
2.2 Desire in Written on the Body 4

3. Disease 5
3.1 Disease in Written on the Body 5
3.2 The metaphorical function of Louise′s disease 6

4. Writing the Body 8
4.1 Louise writing on the narrator′s body 8
4.2 The narrator writing about Louise′s body 9

5. Body-consciousness and "spiritual change" 10
5.1 Body-consciousness and "spiritual change" in literature 10
5.2 Body-consciousness and "spiritual change" in Written on the Body 11

6. Conclusion 12

Bibliography 13

1. Introduction

The most striking feature of Jeanette Winterson′s novel Written on the Body is the genderless narrator of whom we hardly know anything. Winterson once said that her novel is an experimental piece of work:

All my work is experimental in that it plays with form, refuses a traditional narrative line, and includes the reader as a player. By that I mean that the reader has to work with the book. In the case of Written on the Body, the narrator has no name, is assigned no gender, is age unspecified, and highly unreliable. I wanted to see how much information I could leave out - especially the kind of character information that is routine - and still hold a story together.(1)

I want to focus on desire and disease as I think these are the two main themes that build up the framework of the novel and hold the story together. I will first look at what the terms desire and disease imply and then analyse their function in the novel.

2. Desire

2.1 Desire in theory

Jacques Lacan (French psychoanalyst, 1901-1980) is of the opinion that desire is a longing to return to a state of completeness. In the symbolic system a subject faces a split of self and self-representation. This split is then experienced as desire for what is lacking (in the Lacanian scheme: the phallus) (2) . Judith Butler thinks that heterosexual logic associates identification with desire, saying that if one identifies as a given gender, one must desire a different gender (3). In this heterosexual logic woman is the object of desire while man is the subject. One might think that this contradicts the Lacanian idea of desire, where the woman is lacking the phallus and therefore has to be the one who desires and longs for completeness. This apparent contradiction, however, is due to the fact that we have to distinguish desire from straightforward sexual desire. One also has to remember that Written on the Body is an attempt to deregulate desire, liberating it from the binary regimes of gender and sexuality. (4)

2.2 Desire in Written on the Body 

In Winterson’s novel desire is constantly associated with lack or absence. Here the narrator is the one who desires while Louise is the object of his/her desire. Before meeting Louise the narrator has never really desired anyone. In the past it only took him/her two days to get over a finished relationship: “Frank left for Italy and I came home to England. I was torn with grief for two whole days …” (93). His/her feelings for his/her former lovers are summed up in what s/he says about Jacqueline, the woman s/he was in a relationship with when he/she met Louise: “I considered her. I didn’t love her and I didn’t want to love her. I didn’t desire her and I could not imagine desiring her.” (26) … “Jacqueline was an overcoat. She muffled my senses. With her I forgot about feeling and wallowed in contentment. Contentment is a feeling you say? Are you sure it’s not an absence of feeling?” (76). It seems that all the narrator’s past affairs and relationships were only preludes to his/her love for Louise: “… Louise was the woman I wanted even if I couldn’t have her. Jacqueline I had to admit had never been wanted, simply she had had roughly the right shape to fit for a while” (61). When falling in love with Louise the narrator stops “trophy-hunting” and does not want to be selfish anymore but “do the right thing” (43). Desiring this woman makes the narrator want to be a better person.

[...]

1 Interview with Winterson on her Official Website.

2 Keith Green and Jill LeBihan, “Feminism, Literature and Criticism”,

3 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, p.239

4 Christy R. Stevens, “Imagining Deregulated Desire”