‘Written On The Body’ is a book I normally wouldn’t read, and personally, I didn’t find it all that interesting. The only thing I enjoyed was the fact the narrator’s sex was undetermined through the entire thing. The narrator took very careful thought into what they described the narrator to keep it hard to determine. And, as curious humans in need of answers, most would have a hard time not placing a gender to such a narrator.
But how can you place a gender to something when there is no real evidence?
I agree with Rubison on how the only evidence people can come up with about the narrator being female are stereotypical traits that we would expect a woman to have. For example, one author writes how the narrator is a female because she likes Louise’s leg stubble. Now, I haven’t met anyone who likes that, but I highly doubt that only a woman could like leg stubble. It is stereotypical, because we have set the stereotypical man character to like smooth, shaved legs. And a man, in a story, who may not mind if his sexual partner has shaved or not may be a strange idea to some readers. But it is a stereotype for a reason. Men can like stubble on legs just as much as a woman could.
There are two other reason mentioned that the narrator may be female because of the stereotypical traits. One reason was because the narrator ‘sits down to urinate.’ Now, I won’t go into too much detail with this one, but I’m pretty sure both men and woman (if a man tried hard enough) could sit do urinate. It is stereotypical to believe only woman do this, and therefore it isn’t a valid argument. The last argument is that the author normally doesn’t pick a male main character, and mostly writes lesbian literature. As a writer myself, I understand how tiring it can to continue to write the same thing over and over, whether it be the same genre, same character types etc. People can’t be locked into doing the same thing over and over again, or it becomes like an office job. We get tired of doing the same thing over and over. So what do most people do? They try to spice it up a little, or do something different. Winterson, I believe, was just trying out a different idea from what she usually writes.
Stereotyping is something most people do every single day, and I know we’ve already blogged about this once, but it is a hard habit to break. I couldn’t help myself as I read the book, placing different things the narrator did into stereotypes of male and female. But I believe that this is why Winterson gave us a genderless narrator, to show us that the story can be just as good even if we don’t know the gender of a character. Placing the narrator as a woman or a man would have changed the experience of how we read the book, and would have given us expectations and limits for the narrator. Without a gender, we can’t place them in the restrictions of stereotypes, and therefore we get an entirely new character and reading experience.
"Now, I haven’t met anyone who likes that, but I highly doubt that only a woman could like leg stubble. It is stereotypical, because we have set the stereotypical man character to like smooth, shaved legs."
ReplyDeleteActually my boyfriend really likes my hairy legs, he spends all weekend touching them-- he's actually touching them right now ;)
"But I believe that this is why Winterson gave us a genderless narrator, to show us that the story can be just as good even if we don’t know the gender of a character."
I don't think this was really the intention. I think her point was to show that the concept of love, and the experience of love is the same for both genders, and that love is a concept existing independent from gender.
I think hunting for inconsistencies in the text that would designate it as a man or a woman misses the mark entirely. Whether the character stands while peeing is irrelevant. The point of having a neutered narrator is to show that a perspective on love can be neutral. True clues about the gender would be how the character interacts with the lovers or the nature of the perspective itself.
I am with you in your feelings about “Written on the Body”, it is not something I would have picked up and read for myself, or if I happened upon it and started reading it on my own I do not think I would have finished it, so I am glad that it was assigned and therefore I was forced to read it in its entirety. You pointed out that the narrator is described as sitting down to pee, while I think this referees more to a woman then a man, I agree with you that it is not absolute. And if it is a reference to a woman, perhaps that is what Winterson intended; she seems to go back and forth between male and female stereotypical descriptions on purpose. I think this is a clever way to try and make the reader flip-flop between who they think the narrator is. But does it matter if the narrator is male or female or is it better if the narrator is not so readily defined and is more of an androgynous character? Having the narrator’s gender be ambiguous allows the reader to sympathize with the narrator with out the detriment of a specific gender affiliation.
ReplyDeletePersonally I am not a fan of men with hairy legs, in fact whenever I see the hairs on a man’s legs I have to urge to pluck out each one of them. I don’t know why, maybe it’s a strange fetish of some sort but legs hairy or smooth can’t be used for gender identification. I am also aware that in other cultures, particularly in the Caribbean men favor the hairy legs of women. I completely forgot in the novel “the narrator ‘sits down to urinate’.” It is understandable that from that readers will assume that the narrator is woman however he or she may urinated behind a bush not wanting anyone to see their private parts which is understandable. A young relative of mine, when he was much younger used to sit on the toilet as he peed because he was too tired to stand, when he had to pee at night so as to not wet the bed. Throughout the novel whether intentional or not the reader will try label a gender to the narrator. When this is done societal limitation will be placed on the character’s we read about inhibiting the overall experience. We subconsciously expect certain behaviorisms form a man that are different from the expectations applied to a woman. With a genderless narrator we break the box of conformity.
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