Thinking Sex: Representing Desire and Difference
A Feminist and Gender Studies Course
Bryn Mawr College, Fall, 2002

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"Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good be modest, be see and not heard, no..." (9)

"When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun." (136)

"'You'll get over it...' Its the cliches that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You dont get over it because "it" is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes." (155)
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I was frustrated while reading most of the book... I think bc she had moments that I thought were written so beautifully (like the ones I have selected above) followed by text that was written rather awkwardly.

Don't know how I feel quite yet about the split in the middle of the novel... "the cells, etc.," "the skin," etc.... it remoinded me of what Toni Morrison does in _Beloved_, interrupting the flow of the novel's dialogue to write in shorter chapters containing prose... however, I didn't find Winterson's attempt to be as successful as Morrison's.

The thing that struck me the most was that when it came around to the ending of the novel, I thought that I kinda liked the book, (though, I think this might be bc it had a happy ending). Hmmm... I guess I will just have to wait and see how I feel after some discussions in class...

One more thing, I am curious to know what every one else thought about the non-gender-specific protagonist. Was Winterson successful in writing a character that had/has no gender? Was there a point in having the protagonist have no specific gender? Do you think that the story would have been aided in its quality if the protagonist had a gender?

Thats all for now. See you all in class! :)

One question (that I will leave my comfort zone to ask): the back of the book states that Winterson "compels us to see love stripped of clichZ?s and categories." I disagree. Although Winterson takes us (or myself) to explore love in an unprecedented way, I was actually shocked by some of the passages which were quite clichZ?. What do you think?

As I write this in class (I wrote this on Tuesday), I want to run out of the room in hysterics. Please! Don't ruin this book for me. I want its aftertaste to remain the same in my mouth, long after I have read and reread it utterly alone. I have never wanted NOT to share something so vehemently. Can't we let this one alone?

First, the characters seemed very flat to me. I think it might be because the author seemed to approach the text not as a story about the characters but rather a story about the love life of a character. As a result, the reader only sees one side of the person and it makes it difficult to get to know per. I would say that the person seemed overly consumed with their love life, but I don't know if that's the intention or if the author just made her focus too narrow, thereby warping the character into a lovesick person.

Aside from the lacking characters, I also found the writing to be less than communicative. I don't think this is something I can pinopint too well, just a general feeling that it could use a final revision or two.

Lastly, the ambiguity of the gender was a novel idea, and I see several points it may have been trying to convey, but ultimately I think those points could have been conveyed through better, more succinct writing and further character development.

If the author was trying to convey the idea that love takes many forms or that the genders are really quite similar, I think this point would have been better demonstrated by giving an either masculine or femenine character both masculine and feminine qualities. This would have actually said, for example, "look, here is a female, but she is not reacting in stereotypical feminine ways. Ultimately, she is more a human being than a stereotypical woman."

Another thing I think was overlooked in the genderless narrator was the fact that although underlying feelings may be universal, the expression of those feelings and the journey a person takes to understand or uncover those feelings are very different. They are based on a person's many traits, one of those being their physical shape. I feel like the genderless character was sort of a shortcut or cheapskate for developing a REAL character with REAL qualities who could still be seen and understood universally. In the same way we are trying to create sex-ed curriculums for a real group of people, rather than ideal, I feel like the author should have opted for working through the difficulties of a real character rather than making one who could never exist.

Finally, if the idea really was to create a novel in which gender was not an issue by pretending the characters had no gender nor were shaped in complex ways by their gender, why do all the other characters have genders?! The only answer I can think of is that it would have been too hard, which points again to the failure of the author to really express the idea she was going for.

1) the ending of the novel is incredibly vague in order to allow the reader to interpret what they think actually is happening with the illusive Louise.

Gail: "don't you think its strange that life, described as so rich and full, a camel-trail of adventure, should shrink to this coin sized world....what else is embossed on your hands but her? you still love her"
Narrator: "with all my heart"
Gail: "what will you do?"
Narrator: "what can i do? what do you want me to say? that i'll get over it?

In this passage i feel we realize the true love that the narrator has for Louise. The narrator, once promiscuous in search of sex more then love, only learns to love, in the self sacraficing encounters she has with louise. The the author chooses to illuminate teh physicalness of louise, rather then the mental, the words that are used and how they drip of sensualness and care, lead me to believe that the narrators encounter with louise is more then just physical, more then just the physical ness of sex and a body. In the final months before the nerrators departure from louise, we see teh development of this love relationship. The narrators ability to leave louise, in order to do what is best for her, is an act of selflessness and one more example of how the narrator has undergone a transfiguration of sorts, in this environment of love. Before the narrator would not have done such a thing.

So i feel there was love between these two individuals, something that has been questionable amongst people. So the narrator, by this act of selflessness, causes theirself undo amounts of pain, heartache. It seems like their life is now ran by the "what if's" in life. they become almost obsessed with this notion of lost love. After searching all over for their love, to no avail, there is a sense of greater loss and moreso emptiness, seen in the passage above. I feel liek the author conveys through the narrator this sense of nothingness, a sense of incompleteness, emptiness, helplessness. The narrator talks about time being this great "deadener." The narrator says this in just, with sarcasm, not really believing in the potential of forgetting or moving on. thus i believe, this is wear we see plain examples of how this ending might be interpreted as one of suicide.

To continue. There is a break in the text, leading to the imagry of the narrator and louise, together. Then a break again. "This is where the story starts..." It is in this ending that an intepretation of suicide is indeed plausible. The idea of emptiness, depression, hopelessness leading to the narrator's suicide, and as a result allowing them to be in a greater space beyond the confines of the body or world. It is in this space that the story of love is really able to flourish, in this conclusion of rebirth into a greater place, where everything seems to be serene and celestial.

Taking one's life to be with one's love, is nothing new, and i think in a way gives this novel a deeply tragic romantic twist, that pulls at one's heart in a different way.

2. We call them gender pronouns, but why, they don't reference ones gender but rather an indicator of ones sex? this is where our class gets confusing? the gender of the individual is obviously androgynous as i think katie pointed out. but if what we really want to know is if it is indeed a boy or girl then that is a question of biological sex. Also i think winterson on some level might be inserting a social commentary, intentionally or not. The idea that we live in a 2 sexed society, that allows little acceptance or support for individuals who are biologically born inbetween our definitions of male and female, is certainly highlighted. Why can't this person be neither? why do we want to make them something (boy/girl) that they might not be? why can't we read the novel as fact, in the sense that the author wrote it in what might be seen as an intersexed androgynous individual as the narrator. Someone who chooses no gender pronouns to be articulated by...they are born into this world, with no language in order to account for their experience, and in the case of written on the body and our discussion with it...that is all to apparent.

Class on Tuesday was really depressing for me. I really did not feel like the book touched other people the way it did me, and it made me really sad. I thought that we dwelled far too long on the gender issues, which are really not as important as they would seem, and we merely did a surface scan of the book. I had questions about the ending, as well, but I did not feel like such matters should have devoured the entire class period. I sound all high and mighty, but this book really changed me, and I was expecting it to do so for others. I also do not know what kind of matters I would prefer to discuss, but I felt strongly that class on Tuesday could have been better spent.

On another note, I enjoyed her writing style. Sarah H. said something about her writing not being communicative. I can understand this, but that's also something I rather liked. I felt that the way she wrote demonstrated very well how one's mind can work, jumping from one thing to another. It made me feel like I was inside the mind of the main character... Living in her memories while still living in the present.

Oh, and just another thought about the discussion we had yesterday in class. I was thinking about the narrator's abandonment issues. I still feel that leaving Louise was not necessarily a selfless act. We've established that the narrator was always being left by his/her lovers... so this was an opportunity to avoid being left (perhaps there was the fear that Louise would die, and the narrator would be left alone). So this was a way for main character to leave Louise before she could do the same. S/he may be seeing Louise everywhere because now there's this guilt because s/he is not accustomed to doing the breaking up - especially when there's potential for a good relationship.

oh...another thing... just in case people are wondering if there is any other language without gender... Vietnamese is a genderless language. you can read the whole book without knowing the gender of the narrator if the author choose to do so... when refering to a gender, you need to use a specific way to address... there is no grammatical rules for feminine and masculine cases.

The un-gendered character was well done because I couldn't pin the narrator down to male or female. Partly, it was an amazing trick, because it can make the story more universal, or interpretable however the reader wishes. But I think it was distracting, because I definitely spent the entire time trying to discern what the main character's gender was, instead of focusing on the story and the language. I appreciate that Winterson is pushing the reader to NOT use our preconceived notions about gender when judging/interpreting people. The only problem is that it is almost more than our preconceived notions, because it is reality. People are male or female, and even transsexual/transgendered people identify with one or the other gender.

I thought in the end when Louise reappears was completely an illusion, and it took me a long time to even be able to understand how people interpreted it as her really coming back. I also thought that the narrator was irritatingly self-absorbed. I think that s/he left Louise because s/he genuinely wanted what s/he thought was best for Louise, but s/he should never have made the presumption that she could make that decision. Also, after s/he had left Louise, s/he shouldn't have wallowed in self-pity the way s/he did. I understand that the point of that was probably to show us how much his/her love took over the narrator. Still, I feel like even the most 'in love' couple would be able to function without the other person... Maybe I am just cynical.

I find it interesting that few people have written (or seem to have liked) the middle section of the book, "The Cells, Tissues, Systems and Cavities of the Body." To me, this section was most intriguing due to its rambling, freeness (both in thought and grammatical structure). The section reminded me of a personal journal where one writes for oneself, letting inner feelings, reflections, thoughts,etc. incredibly intense expressed in broken language because narrative, grammatically complex language could not keep up with the ideas--still I found many of the phrases absolutely beautiful and found the connection between biology and art (in terms of adressing sexual feelings)especially successful. The prose form, biological phrases interupted by metaphors, imagery, and memories a chaotic fusion, overwhelming but with highly concentrated meaning and importance, much like sexual activity itself.

the most facinating part about this book for me was the breaking down of gender roles and re-emerging with simply expereince. It amazed me how much the straightforward experience that we were given could be so differently colored by the gender i asigned it. I waver between whether or not i think that the sexual interactions can actually be androdgonous. On the one had it seems that the sexual organs are very integral to the types of pleasure and acts that happen yet at the same time, in a way, are secondary to the pure intamacy of simply having a sexual experience. As i said, i feel pulled by both views. The sexual interactions are, in my opinion, the hardest sections to write from a genderless perspective. It is incredibly difficult to break down the strict gender=genitalia link that most of us are raised with. I wonder if it is possible to truly break down and if people thought winterson's attempt was successful.

Ok so I think I am almost done catching myself up.

I had some trouble getting into the book. For the first 20-30 pages I really didn't know where per was going with the novel. But then I woke up at 5 am in Vermont one day over fall break walked into the living room of the condo I was squatting in on mount snow and read until 7:30 am and finished the book. One sitting and I was done. As I was getting closer to the end I intensely wanted for Louise to step back into per's life. I didn't care how or in what context I just wanted to have some kind of finality with it. I was a nervous wreck. I read the last 20 pages in less than 10 minutes, rushing through it anticipating some ending, some relief. And when "Louise" appeared I was satiated. I told Ali Briggs (I was on a random road trip with her while I was reading it and her and I had tried to read the first 20 pages together, aloud in my car while driving through upstate NY, but she got too bored to keep reading) that it was a happy ending. I didn't really believe myself though. I had a weird mixed reaction to the ending, but I wanted a happy ending so I halfheartedly convinced myself that it was a happy ending and went on with my life. The novel had sent me on an emotional rollercoaster and I had to deal with it in some way.

We spoke in class about how one usually relates to a character in a story and that is why s/he becomes so interested in the story. I didn't relate to anyone. But I have this crush. This person (I am making a conscious decision to keep this person androgynous in the spirit of Written on the Body) I have a crush on is someone I spent very little time with and a very brief fling and then I left to travel and then return to school. So I left this at the end of July and I'm totally still smitten. And I don't really know this person. I have spent maybe 30 hours in per's presence and I don't really know per but the impression I have from our interactions has helped me build per's character to be something I would like for per to be. And my per (being fling from home) and per (protagonist of written on the body) seemed very similar to me, in that untamed wild self righteous self absorbed but occasionally will try and do the right thing but fail miserably sorta way. I kept thinking per was my per from home and that is how I related to the story. Which is why I think I wanted to see some finality to the story, even if the finality was only the beginning. But I definitely don't relate to Louise (for the record).