Blog Post: Reading Response 6 (Written on the Body)

Something of great interest to me within Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body is the use of figurative language and its function within the novel. Through reading this book I noticed how figurative language appears in reference to Louise, used either to describe her or to explore the narrator’s feelings towards her. When the narrator leaves Louise to ensure that she gets proper cancer treatment, the use of figurative language disappears. No figurative language is used to describe Gail, even though Gail plays a large role in the narrator’s life when Louise is absent.

However, when the narrator begins thinking of Louise the figurative language reappears. It is used to express the narrator’s feelings about Louise’s cancer diagnosis, with the narrator describing Louise’s clavicle on page 119, for example, as a musical instrument:

“I cannot think of the double curve lithe and flowing with movement as a bony ridge, I think of it as the musical instrument that bears the same root. Clavis. Key. Clavichord. The first stringed instrument with a keyboard. Your clavicle is both keyboard and key. If I push my fingers into the recesses behind the bone I find you like a shell crab. I find the openings between the springs of muscle where I can press myself into the chords of your neck. The bone runs in perfect scale from sternum to scapula. It feels lathe-turned. Why should I bone be balletic” (119).

Such use of figurative language to convey the way the narrator feels about Louise’s body expresses the deep, meaningful way that the narrator loves Louise and how large of a role that Louise plays in the narrator’s life. When Louise is absent from the narrator’s life, the use of figurative is absent as well, showing that life without Louise is a life that is dull and lacking vivid description.

Interestingly, the use of figurative language is not only used by the narrator to describe Louise, but also to describe her mother:

“it was hard to image Pea having any figure. She was like a child’s drawing of a snowman, just two circles plonked one on top of the other” (166-167).

This use of figurative language is far less appealing. It is a complete contrast from Louise. This contrast of comparison between Louise’s mother’s appearance and Louise’s appearance, further conveys how the narrator views Louise as a major influence in their life and just how much the narrator holds Louise up to a fantasy of vivid perfection.