Analysis Of Love Demands Expression: Written On The Body By Jeanette Winterson

Love Demands Expression: Male versus Female
“Written on the Body” by Jeanette Winterson, is a romantic novel about a suspicious narrator that does not give away the identity of their gender. The author uses different devices to keep from giving away this information. The narrator seeks out relationships with married women, yet in the past they have had relationships with men. The author also avoids giving the reader clues by not describing how the narrator is dressed. However, after having many relationships with married women, they feel that they have found the perfect partner. Although the narrator has both male and female characteristics, their male characteristics are more pronounced such as: the use of penetration, the attraction to women, the lack of emotion and the …show more content…
The way the narrator expresses and describes penetration is very masculine. In my opinion, the narrator with much detail describes male penetration. I don’t believe that a female would describe penetration in the same manner as the narrator does in the novel. The narrator describes how he penetrates women and gives very accurate and distinctive details about it. For example, there is a passage where the narrator states, “She lies against the light resting her back on a rod of light. The light breaks colors under her eyelids. She wants the light to penetrate her, breaking open the dull colds of her soul where nothing has warmed her for more summers than she count” (73). The narrator describes the scene in a very beautiful and romantic way. Although the scene is about the woman that he is deeply in loved, Louise, having intercourse with her husband, the narrator describes the scene in a way that only a male would. The narrator describes the scene in a poetic, romantic, and very fluid fashion. In my experience, a woman would not describe the same scene in the same