Love and Loss Theme Analysis

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 the end of the relationship with Louise as a kind of death. After learning Louise has been diagnosed with leukemia, the narrator decides to leave her in the hope that she will return to her husband, Elgin, a prominent physician who specializes in cancer research, and receive top-of-the-line cancer treatment. At first believing the sacrifice will save Louise’s life, the narrator eventually realizes it was a terrible mistake and understands that, as a result of the pain these actions have caused, the loss of this relationship will be irreversible. At the same time, the cancer diagnosis itself increases the likelihood of Louise’s actual death, which the narrator dreads but knows they ultimately must prepare for. As the narrator discovers in grieving Louise, one mourns love in similar ways to how one mourns the death of a loved one. Moreover, both types of loss result in an absence that leaves in its wake an unbearable and unsurmountable pain. By examining the narrator’s grief over their relationship with Louise alongside their grief over Louise’s likely impending death, Winterson’s novel suggests that loss is a fundamental part of love.