38 pages • 1 hour read
Jeanette WintersonWritten On The Body
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 96-112Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 96-106 Summary
The narrator agonizes for three days while awaiting Louise’s decision, drinking copious quantities of gin to cope. The narrator cries in Louise’s arms when she arrives at the flat. After giving the narrator a bath and a sleeping pill, Louise declares, “I will never let you go” (96). The narrator then speculates about the possibility of Virtual Romance in the future, although both the narrator and Louise prefer the actuality of physical relationships.
Louise brings the narrator to Oxford in order to avoid Elgin. The pair rent a room, and when Louise declares, “I’m going to leave” (98), the narrator is stunned to realize that she is leaving her husband. Elgin insists that the divorce be granted for “unreasonable behaviour” as opposed to for adultery, which Louise favors.
Louise and the narrator subsist happily despite their spare finances. When Louise leaves to visit her mother on Christmas Eve in order to advise her of plans to divorce Elgin, the narrator is delighted and imagines “how fine [Louise] would look on the Steppes of Russia” (100). Reality intervenes when Elgin appears and tells the narrator that Louise has leukemia, a cancer of the blood. Elgin explains to the narrator that Louise’s survival is contingent upon Elgin’s “look[ing] after her” (102). His elite status as a leading cancer researcher can afford Louise, as Elgin’s wife, access to the “very latest medico-technology” (102).
When Louise arrives back home, she protests that she feels well; Elgin, however, tells the narrator than Louise only has 100 months to live. He explains the importance of speedy treatment: “If we treat her now there is a chance that the disease might be halted” (104). Elgin encourages the narrator to save Louise by allowing her to return to her husband.
The narrator writes to Louise to tell her that “I love you more than life itself” (105), but the narrator is leaving to an unknown destination because “you are safe in my home but not in my arms” (105). Begging Louise’s forgiveness and leaving her unaware of the narrator’s destination, the narrator departs for Yorkshire, rents a cottage without providing anyone except the narrator’s employers with a forwarding address, and takes a job in a local wine bar.
Pages 107-112 Summary
The narrator describes the pretentious menu at a wine bar, as well as the hovel-like cottage from which the narrator bicycles the 20-mile distance to work. The environment reeks of decay and stagnation, and the owners of the cottage feel that the narrator is a fool for renting the place. The narrator ponders the biological criteria required to classify an entity as “living” (108), including that of reproduction. Though the narrator has no desire to reproduce, the narrator still wants to be loved.
A decrepit, starving cat appears outside the cottage, and the narrator gives it a warm bath and milk. The narrator has been neglecting the narrator’s own hygiene, so the narrator also bathes. The animal sleeps in the narrator’s bed and purrs with delight, reminding the narrator of the heartache of not sleeping with Louise. The narrator derides the advice given the bereaved to sleep “with a pillow pulled down beside you” (110).
Although the narrator visits the library the next day with the intention of spending time in the Russian section, the narrator peruses the medical section. This event marks the beginning of a near-obsession with the study of anatomy in an effort to remain connected to Louise and her illness.
Pages 96-112 Analysis
The relationship between one’s physical and emotional lives continues to thread through the narrative. The narrator’s physical state declines as the narrator waits for Louise to make her decision and imagines that the relationship with Louise may be over. Louise then physically and emotionally nurtures the narrator back to health when she returns to tell the narrator that she is leaving her husband. Elgin makes the case that the narrator’s romance with Louise can only continue at the cost of Louise’s physical health. The state of a lover’s physical body becomes entwined with the state of a lover’s emotional health, revealing the symbolic importance of the anatomical imagery.
Although the narrator continues to largely be a cipher, the narrator reveals some additional personal information in this section of the novel, suggesting a new kind of vulnerability. After moving to Yorkshire, the narrator provide an address to the narrator’s employer, a publisher, and the narrator notes an intention to spend time in the Russian section of the library. When reflecting upon the general atmosphere of decrepitude in their rented cottage, the narrator provides some physical details, describing the narrator’s hair, which is “sparse and thinning, greying, gone” (107).
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By Jeanette Winterson
