The Body Theme Analysis

The body plays a central role in Jeanette Winterson’s psycho-spiritual and philosophical explorations of love in Written on the Body. The novel, which tells the story of the narrator’s love affair with a married woman named Louise, delves deeply into the sensual aspects of love, illustrating how love often finds its truest expression through the body. Indeed, the narrator’s love for Louise is inextricable from the intensely physical nature of their relationship. The depth of their intimacy is not communicated verbally—rather, it manifests as a “secret code” that is “written on the body” and slowly deciphered through physical touch. As the novel shows, this kind of intimacy is transformative and leaves behind its own imprint: “Your hand prints are all over my body. Your flesh is my flesh. You deciphered me and now I am plain to read.” The body is also central to the narrator’s processing of grief in the wake of the relationship’s abrupt end, and the novel illustrates how the body itself serves as a site of memory, a “palimpsest” of accumulated experiences. In particular, it shows how the “physical memory” housed in the body opens a channel to the past one creates in one’s mind. As part of this grieving process, the narrator becomes obsessed with anatomy, and the “clinical language” of medical textbooks offer an additional avenue to “go on knowing” Louise. Through the narrator’s interpretation of the body as both a vehicle for emotional intimacy and a vital link between past and present, the novel illustrates the critical role the body plays as a person navigates the world and tries to make sense of their relationships and their life.