Written on the Body Themes

In the opening line of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, the anonymous, genderless narrator poses the question: “Why is the measure of love loss?” The novel, which engages in a profound reflection on the physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of love, offers a retrospective look at the narrator’s passionate affair with a married woman named Louise Rosenthal. Loss and love are deeply intertwined in the novel, in part because the narrator experiences…

Infidelity is a central theme of Written on the Body. Not only does the anonymous, genderless narrator enter into a passionate love affair with a married woman (Louise), but the affair also starts while the narrator is in a relationship with another woman (Jacqueline). The narrator freely admits to having frequently been involved in these kinds of illicit affairs, and often with married women who often claimed that they had…

Written on the Body relates an anonymous, genderless narrator’s retrospective account of an adulterous affair with a married woman (Louise). Not only does the novel comprise a recounting of the past, but within that recounting, there are also the novel also reflects on the nature and power of memory—including memory’s ability to distort. Memory takes many forms throughout the novel, whether psychological or physical. For example, the near-chronological account of the narrator’s…