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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Written on the Body, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Loss
Desire, Infidelity, and Love
The Body
Memory and Meaning
Summary
Analysis
Why is loss the only true measure of love? What does it mean to say, “I love you”? The narrator, whose gender remains undefined for the entirety of the novel, defines love as a “precise emotion,” one that is always asking to be expressed precisely. And yet there are so many cliches about love. Addressing a former lover (Louise) directly, the narrator recalls a hot Sunday in August when the two were together near a creek. The narrator remembers how their beloved was careful not to say “I love you” too soon.
The novel opens with a reflection on the nature of love by posing a pointed question. In so doing, it highlights the fundamental role loss plays in love. In this way, the passage sets the tone for the novel and establishes loss, grief, and love as the novel’s central themes. The reader can sense that the narrator is trying to make sense of this relationship in the wake of its ending, ultimately asking if what they shared with their former lover was indeed true love.
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On that day in August, the narrator and Louise argued in the rented room that they decided to stay in because Louise was still married. This kind of illicit love affair was not new for the narrator, who had been in relationships with married women before. The narrator was often told that everything in the marriage was fine before, but the narrator knows that the real reason behind the affair was “Boredom.” One of the married women was Bathsheba. When the relationship with Bathsheba ended, the narrator had to steal back letters and ended up burning every last one. It is curious to note how many married women the narrator has been with.
This passage introduces infidelity as one of the novel’s central themes. By revealing the role infidelity has played in the narrator’s romantic past, it provides insight into the narrator’s character, in particular their irreverence towards relationships, and this also provides a steep contrast to their passion for and devotion to Louise. The passage also introduces the symbol of the rented room, which will come to represent the nature of relationships as temporary containers for love and desire.
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In the present and from a different rented room, the narrator remembers being with Louise that August, feeding her plums. However, the narrator casts doubt on their own chronology, acknowledging simultaneously that they are trying to figure out where things went wrong. That night, in the rented room, Louise shares her decision to leave her husband (Elgin). The evening that follows is joyous, like a wedding celebration. The narrator recalls making love to Louise every day that June. People claims that sex is not important in a relationship, but the narrator disagrees. Yet, having chased their fair share of pleasure and orgasm, the narrator also acknowledges that sex can become its own sort of cliché.
Just before the narrator and Louise get together, the narrator ends an affair with an anarcho-feminist Dutch girl named Inge. Together, they terrorize the men’s bathroom at the Louvre, using Inge’s Semtex to bomb the urinals in the name of dismantling the patriarchy. The narrator thought it was love until Inge suggests they communicate via carrier pigeons, deeming all other forms of communication unacceptable. If the reader is wondering why the narrator did not dump Inge then and there, it was because of her breasts.
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After Inge comes Jacqueline, who accompanies two of the narrator’s friends when they come to help carpet the narrator’s new flat. lat. The narrator’s lack of desire for Jacqueline is in part what makes Jacqueline appealing to the narrator, who has just been through the emotionally wrought affair with their married dentist (Bathsheba). Jacqueline is simple and without fuss, and so too would their relationship be. In fact, the narrator has even come to embrace its “ordinariness.”
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Around a year into their relationship with Jacqueline, the narrator’s friends begin to accuse them of complacency, doubting their commitment to Jacqueline. The narrator protests until they meet Louise, who has been married for 10 years to a prominent doctor named Elgin. At first, the narrator and Jacqueline are both friends with Louise. But one afternoon, the narrator turns up unannounced at Louise’s home, and Louise suggestively holds her lips to the narrator’s cheek upon greeting. Later that night, Louise invites the narrator to the opera. The narrator is happy to learn that Jacqueline needs to tend to her sick mother, and therefore they can be free to join Louise the next day.
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Louise’s husband Elgin was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family. He strikes the narrator as having both a sense of entitlement and of victimization. Elgin met Louise when she beat him in a high school debate—their schools were a mile apart, and Elgin made a point to walk past Louise’s school just as he knew she would be leaving. Elgin’s parents, Esau and Sarah, did not approve of the match, but Elgin soon decided to leave his family and his past behind him. Louise was drawn to Elgin because he was safe and controllable. Elgin saw in Louise someone he could show off to the world.
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Shortly after Louise and the narrator go to the opera, Elgin leave for a work trip. The narrator takes advantage of his absence and returns to Louise’s house. They have lunch together, and throughout the meal the narrator fantasizes about touching Louise’s lips. Louise asks the narrator if they are going to have an affair, and though the narrator says no to Louise, they have admittedly already considered the possibility of an affair. Later that night, Louise calls to ask the narrator to come over the following day. The narrator goes about the evening with Jacquline as if everything is normal, careful not to talk for fear of revealing thoughts of Louise.
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That night, the narrator dreams about an ex-girlfriend named Amy. Amy was really into papier-mâché and made snake and placed it in a mailbox. In the snake’s mouth was a rat-trap, and Amy demonstrated its effectiveness by shoving a leek into the snake’s mouth. The narrator wakes from the dream about Amy with chills and steps out into the garden for some air. They still do not know what they are going to do about Louise. For the first time, the narrator wants to do what is “right,” not just what they want.
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The narrator believes they owe this desire to do right to the experience they had with Bathsheba. Before she left for a six-week trip to South Africa, the narrator gave Bathsheba an ultimatum, but Bathsheba decided to stay with her husband. Six weeks after her return, Bathsheba visited the narrator at their flat as though nothing happened. Before leaving again, Bathsheba disclosed that she may have contracted a venereal disease from her husband, even though she had told the narrator they had stopped having sex. Bathsheba made some excuse about preserving her husband’s “sexual confidence,” but the narrator didn’t buy it.
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The narrator walked Bathsheba home that night and was overcome with rage and shame, having realized that their collusion in the affair resulted in the loss of their own pride and self-respect. The next day, the narrator went to the “Clap Clinic” and learned they did not have an STD, but the nurse encouraged them to return in three months, nonetheless. On the way out of the clinic, the narrator bought themselves a bouquet of flowers. Back home, the narrator spraypainted the words “self-respect” over the door.
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The narrator goes to Louise’s house the next morning. Before entering, they watch Louise eat breakfast through the window. Then, when Louise goes to her room to take a shower, the narrator enters through an unlocked door and lingers in her bedroom, admitting to being drawn to explore Louise’s laundry basket. When Louise exits the bathroom, she walks right up to the narrator, who kisses Louise’s hands. Then, Louise leads the narrator upstairs, and their affair begins.
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Hours later, the narrator hears the sound of schoolchildren walking home from school. Right away, the narrator tells Louise “I love you.” Louise accuses the narrator of “trophy hunting” and seeking “control.” The narrator then understands at that moment that they do not yet have Louise’s trust. They ask Louise what they need to do, and Louise says that to prove themselves they must come to her “without a past.” The narrator admits to not having considered the significance of this affair on account of having been preoccupied with Jacqueline.
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The narrator leaves Louise’s house in the rain and heads to the zoo, where Jacqueline works. When Jacqueline sees the narrator, she hands over a bag of groceries, and they walk together, talking about Jacqueline’ s day. The narrator invites Jacquline to get coffee and cake, and Jacqueline guesses that they are meeting to discuss Louise. The narrator admits to seeing Louise, and Jacqueline responds that she thought the narrator had changed. She asks what the narrator plans to do, but the narrator wants them to decide what to do together. Jacquline accuses the narrator of doing what they want regardless and leaves abruptly. The narrator is unable to catch up with her.
The narrator sits down on a rainy bench in the park and looks into people’s homes to try and imagine the lives they lead. This spurs the memory of a different old girlfriend, Catherine, a scriptwriter. Together, they would take walks, look into post people’s homes, and invent scenarios about their lives before going to the cinema to see arthouse films. Those experiences made the narrator realize that the movies gave a false idea of reality—no one does anything past seven o’clock. Catherine ultimately left the narrator because she believed that, as a writer, she herself would not make a good long-term partner.
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Back on the park bench in the rain, the narrator smiles thinking of Catherine, even though the narrator is not feeling happy. The narrator gets up to go home to Jacqueline but finds that the door to the apartment is locked. The narrator goes back to Louise’s house, and she makes them cocoa and insists that they sleep in separate beds. The narrator wonders whether Jacquline knew that by locking the door, she was ultimately driving the narrator into Louise’s arms. The narrator realized in the park that whom they truly wanted to be with was Louise. In fact, the narrator never really wanted Jacqueline; it was simply that, for a while at least, she “fit.”
The narrator puts on a bathrobe and hopes desperately it is not Elgin’s. Louise reassures the narrator that it’s hers, then she reminds the narrator of the day the two of them got caught in a rainstorm and Jacqueline insisted Louise wear her dressing gown. Louise admits to wishing that day that she could wear the narrator’s robe. Louise lights a fire as there is no central heating in her home. She shares that Elgin doesn’t really like their lifestyle but believes it helps make him “original.” Louise does not despise Elgin but rather feels disappointed in the trajectory of his career, which shifted after his mother, Sarah, got cancer.
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Elgin and his parents, Sarah and Esau, hadn’t spoken for some time, but Esau called Elgin when Sarah went to the hospital. She was in such pain she couldn’t speak. Elgin came at once and. Before finding Esau, he spoke to the doctor, who told him Sarah had bone cancer. Later, after the funeral, Elgin went back to the pharmacy his father owned and operated. There, Esau asked Elgin why Sarah died. Elgin explained that she was too weak to heal from the cancer. That was the last time Elgin saw his father. From that moment on he began an “obsessional study of carcinoma,” specifically the potential benefit of gene therapy, which was considered “sexy medicine” at the time.
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Elgin thus abandoned his aspirations to work as a doctor in the humanitarian sector in exchange for a more prestigious and lucrative career as a cancer researcher. Louise claims that Elgin no longer cares for people, and she criticizes his ambition. Hearing this, the narrator wonders if they deserve Louise. Louise, the narrator observes, is unusual in that she prefers a slow build-up to pleasure and has tastes that seem more suitable for another century. She and Elgin do not make love anymore, though she pleasures him from time to time (just never inside her). Elgin has outlandish sexual tastes and an inability to be naked in front of strangers. He knows that she knows he commonly visits sex workers.
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The narrator asks Louise why she is still with Elgin. Louise explains that Elgin was a good friend before he became obsessed with work. She admits to having been satisfied with their leading two separate lives if not for the fact that she spotted the narrator in the park two years prior. The narrator wants to know more but doesn’t question her. Throughout the night, the narrator falls ill, and in that feverish state, they begin seeing ghost-like figures that resemble former girlfriends. The ghosts cry out, accusing the narrator of betrayal. Louise comforts the narrator and promises to “never let […] go.”
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The next morning, the narrator borrows Louise’s car and returns home. Jacqueline is not there, but the bedroom is destroyed, with pillows ripped and the contents of drawers strewn all about. Jacqueline stole almost everything in the apartment. The narrator goes to pee and sees that the bathroom has also been vandalized, and the word “shit” is smeared in fecal matter on the wall. Jacqueline is such a “nice girl,” so the fact that she has caused such destruction is somewhat of a surprise.
Lying on the living room floor, the narrator is overcome with sadness. They don’t want to live a double life, with a pair of “slippers” at home and “dancing shoes” waiting around the corner. The narrator has never been someone’s “slippers,” but they recall having been someone’s “dancing shoes.” It often felt as though adultery existed in another dimension. But on Sunday the woman would return to home their husband.
The narrator remembers reading women’s magazines while waiting in the dentist’s office. The magazines would offer tips on how to tell if a spouse was cheating. The magazine claims that it is harder to know if a woman is being unfaithful. Unless she works, she will have a tougher time getting away with it. So the narrator wonders if that is why so many women are choosing careers or prefer sex in the afternoons?
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One of the narrator’s former girlfriends, Judith, could only orgasm in the afternoon. She worked at the Botanical Gardens in Oxford. They always had sex outside while Judith was at work. Once, they had a fight after sex, and Judith locked the narrator out of the greenhouse. The narrator, wearing very little clothing, ran home and called Judith to break up with her and to get their clothes back. Judith told the narrator she had burned everything. Remembering this now, narrator wonders if perhaps a “higher self” keeps orchestrating such situations to prevent worldly possessions from impeding “spiritual progress.”
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In the present, the narrator recalls Louise’s words from the night before. The first six months of any affair are the most addictive, and what is happening now with Louise is exactly what the narrator feared would happen. Jacqueline was like “an overcoat”—she provided a layer of protection from the feeling of being whipped around by love. Yet it was not until settling down with Jacqueline that the narrator began reminiscing about past girlfriends, including Estelle, who had a scrap-metal business and a Rolls-Royce with a pneumatic back seat.
The narrator’s romantic past dissipates in Louise’s presence. It is like being reborn. Commitment to one person is a feeble attempt to quell desire for another, but love is in a category of its own. Love is the only thing that can surpass desire. People believe that marriage serves as a safeguard against desire, but marriage alone is ineffective. One of the narrator’s rich, worldly friends decided to get married after years of chasing a dancer who refused to settle down. Though the friend claimed he would never desire another once he was married, he frequently spent weekends with the dancer.
The narrator understands how infidelity, even in the mind, can damage what they and Louise share, and they are anxious for things to be different with Louise. The narrator wishes to maintain this desire for Louise beyond the six-month threshold that defined their previous relationships. Though they have historically been able to override it, the “alarm” still sounds. With Bathsheba, a three-year relationship was possible because the narrator’s actual contact with Bathsheba was so infrequent—the two hardly saw each other. The narrator wonders what might stop this alarm from going off with Louise. When Louise kisses them, they feel like both a lover and a child.
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The narrator likens their desire for Louise to the love that drove explorers to take to the sea to discover unknown territories. The narrator is willing to risk it all and abandon their past for Louise. When they kiss, the narrator quivers. And after they make love, they look quietly out the window together. The narrator begins to sense the intimacy growing between them. Had they never seen a couple before who had been together long-term, the narrator would not believe this kind of intimacy is possible. There is both the sense that they have known Louise forever, and yet they know nothing about her at the same time
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Louise confesses to Elgin about her affair with the narrator, but Elgin’s primary concern is with which bed they were in. He also asks if Louise plans to leave him, but she tells him she doesn’t know. Then, she asks the narrator if she should leave Elgin, and wanting to say yes, the narrator holds their tongue and shrugs. It is clear right away that Louise is disappointed by this response. The narrator explains that the relationship with Jacquline is over, but Louise wants to offer “more than infidelity.” The narrator insists that they still have work to do and wants to be sure they want to be together.
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Louise was first drawn to the narrator two years ago, when she saw the narrator walking in the park. She believed the narrator was the most beautiful thing—male or female—she had ever laid eyes on. She followed the narrator to the British Library, where the narrator often works on translations. She asked the desk clerk for the narrator’s name and soon got the narrator’s address. Then Louise pretended to be the victim of a crime to draw the narrator out of their apartment. She tried to stop thinking about the narrator for both Jacqueline and Elgin’s sake and to settle with being just friends, but it did not work. The narrator is still confused by Louise’s initial interest, but Louise insists that the narrator is beautiful.
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Jacqueline bangs on the door to the narrator’s apartment. As soon as she enters, she throws a glass at Louise; it misses and breaks on the wall behind her. The narrator angrily grabs Jacqueline’s hand and demands she return her key. Then the narrator slaps Jaqueline across the face in response to the fecal matter she smeared all over the bathroom and drags her down to her car. Realizing the magnitude of these violent actions, the narrator cries out of shame. Back in the apartment, the narrator asks Louise for forgiveness, and Louise explains that if the narrator ever hits her, she will leave. Louise then enters the bathroom and sees the shit. They clean together for the rest of the evening.
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The narrator believes they are tied to Louise by “a single loop of love,” and they want that loop to guide them without causing fear or suffocation. The following weeks, Louise and the narrator spend as much time together as they can but are also exhausted from trying to be so careful all the time, especially with Elgin’s feelings. One night, after dinner, they have a raucous night of sex. Their bodies come together in such a way that it is as though Louise’s hands can read the narrator’s body. Elgin was supposed to be out, but the next morning he is seated at the breakfast table. He complains about the noise they made and accuses Louise of being a whore.
Elgin leaves for work. Louise reflects for a while and then asks the narrator to wait three days for a message. In that time, the narrator is a mess, unable to get any work done or think about anything but Louise. Walking home from the library, the narrator tries to accept that Louise is never coming back. The narrator becomes increasingly unsure about everything Louise once said about Elgin, in particular about them not wanting to have a baby. The narrator compares Louise to Bathsheba—when faced with pressure to make a decision, Bathsheba came back and tried to negotiate. The narrator knows Louise will simply not come back.
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The narrator once got with someone named Crazy Frank, who had little people for parents but was himself six feet tall. He was shy and would bring his parents everywhere he went, holding them on each of his shoulders, to make friends. Frank had no interest in settling down and even warned the narrator against falling in love with him, expressing a need to be free. After they left each other, the narrator wallowed for a couple days before coming to sense about wanting a man obsessed with little people and small things. Sex can sometimes feel like love. But even after all of these experiences, the narrator is still unsure about what they want this relationship with Louise to become.
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The second day after the narrator left Louise’s house, the narrator literally attaches their hand to the library chair in an attempt to get work done. The narrator gives the key to another patron, but after about an hour, that man leaves. The narrator is able to get some work done, but after a while, they are stuck trying to stop thoughts of Louise, and their hand starts to swell. Two guards carry the narrator, still strapped to the chair, to the supervisor’s office. They have to cut the chair and fine the narrator for damaging library property. Can the narrator stoop any lower? Yes, in fact. That night, the narrator prowls around Louise’s house, attempting to spy on her.
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The narrator wakes up the next morning shivering, wishing for a fever to come on. In a desperate state, the narrator closes the curtains and begins to drink. On the third day, Louise comes over, and the narrator bursts into tears. Louise tells the narrator she will “never [...] let go.” It is unclear what draws two people to one another, even though dating agencies claim to have a science behind their matches. And as technology advances, there will be more ways to connect virtually. But that virtuality is not what the narrator wants with Louise.
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It is August, and Louise brings the narrator to Oxford to get some distance from Elgin. There, in their rented room, she tells the narrator that she is leaving Elgin, because to be with anyone but the narrator is to live a life of lies. The narrator will cherish these words always. They go home together to the narrator’s apartment, and Louise brings with her nothing but the clothes on her back. After nearly five months of living together, around Christmas time, Louise leaves to visit her mother, and Elgin appears at the door. He tells the narrator that Louise has cancer.
The narrator is stunned. Unable to stand up straight after hearing the bad news, the narrator asks Elgin for the details. Elgin explains that Louise is sick with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which is incurable. He wants the narrator to let Louise go back to him so he can take her to Switzerland for the very latest in treatment options. When Louise gets back to the apartment, the narrator starts crying. Louise tries to reassure the narrator by saying she is getting a second opinion, but the narrator is beginning to feel angry at her. They talk well into the night. Louise insists she will not go back to Elgin and that she has a plan for how the two of them can face her illness together.
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The narrator goes to see Elgin again the next day. He shares Louise’s test results and tells the narrator that Louise could lose her life if she doesn’t go back to Elgin and receive the treatment that he has planned for her. The narrator writes Louise a letter, explaining that they could never forgive themselves if their love cost Louise her life. The narrator pleads for her to go back to Elgin, then they leave London and move to Yorkshire.
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In Yorkshire, the narrator rents a small cottage in the countryside and gets a job at a wine bar. The sparsely furnished cottage is 20 miles from the bar, and the narrator purchases a bike to cover the distance, preferring exhaustion in the hopes it will prevent thoughts of Louise. The narrator tries to clean up the apartment, with flowers and some patches of wood. A few nights later, the narrator hears a yowling outside the door and discovers a thin, mangy cat. The narrator bathes the cat and offers him a bowl of milk. Though the cat sleeps soundly on their chest, the narrator doesn’t sleep at all, preferring to be so exhausted that dreaming is impossible.
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The narrator recalls the pleasure of sleeping next to Louise, and the qualities of her body—its smell, its touch. Bereavement books recommend sleeping with a large pillow so that the bed will feel less empty. But the narrator finds it hard to believe that the authors of such books really believe a pillow is a substitute for a living, breathing person. To the narrator, without Louise in it, the bed is empty.
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The narrator gives the cat the name Hopeful—the day after he arrived, the narrator was able to eat and even do some translation work. The next day, the narrator goes to the library and checks out medical books instead of Russian ones. Through a newfound obsession with anatomy, the narrator feels they will continue to know Louise more intimately even than before
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