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Gender and sexuality in Written on the Body

Ana Martínez Ramón (20276793)

Department of English, Universitat de Barcelona
Narratives Contemporànies en Anglès
Gemma Lopez
April 17, 2023
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Gender and sexuality in Written on the Body

Gender identity has always been present in our culture and our society. Jeanette
Winterson aims to deconstruct gender binaries and their roles in Written on the Body (2014) by
creating a narrative voice that dissolves gender identity in language. In this novel, written in the
90s, we can see a huge influence of the theoretical publications of the time as Judith Butler’s
“Gender Trouble” in which she proposes how gender binaries and sexuality are a social
construct, meaning that gender comes with social roles that make society decide what identity is
more ‘suitable’. Therefore, if gender is a social construct, it can be reversed, and gender roles are
created so they can be recreated. Written on the Body is a transgressive novel not only because of
the dissolution of gender identity but also because it creates a romance where the gender of the
narrator is not specified. Traditionally, culture has imposed that romance should have gender
specificity which divides the characters into different roles depending on their gender identity.
What comes with these gender roles in relationships is the separation of male or female because
of our social and culturally imposed heteronormativity. Winterson also dismantles the idea of a
romance only about a heterosexual relationship with imposed gender roles. In this essay I will
discuss how gender and sexuality are dismantled in Written on the Body by analysing the
theoretical publications of the 90s, the elements of the novel that create this ambiguity, and the
ambiguity on sexuality.

First of all, Winterson’s novel is hugely inspired by Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble”,
which discusses the dissolution of binaries when it comes to gender. The main idea of Butler’s
work is that gender is a social construct, that is developed through culture, so then, this construct
can be different, and gender constructs can be recreated. Gender as a social creation “appears as
a passive medium on which cultural meanings are inscribed or as the instrument through which
an appropriative and interpretive will determines a cultural meaning for itself” (Butler, 2006,
p.12) Thus, not only gender is a social interpretation, but it also comes with roles or obligations
imposed by this interpretation that come from a patriarchal society in which the woman is
supposed to be the subject, and the carer while the man is supposed to be the object and the
giver. Butler also talks about the falling of the gender construct by saying that “the very notion of
“the person” is called into question by the cultural emergence of those “incoherent” […]
gendered beings who appear to be persons but who fail to conform to the gendered norms […]
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by which persons are defined” (2006, p.23) This theoretical discourse can be seen in Written on
the Body when there’s no gender identity in the narrator, there is no gender defined in the novel.
Moreover, Winterson creates ambiguity on the gender of the narrator by having gender roles of
the male and female gender. As a result of this ambiguity, we need a reader that accepts this
gender binaries and doesn’t encapsulate the narrator into one gender.

Secondly, there are various elements of the novel that deconstructs this idea of gender as
binaries. One of the elements is the ambiguity of the gender of the narrator, which is ambiguous
to portray that there is no need of encapsulating the body into socially constructed genders.
Throughout the novel, Winterson rejects to give information about the gender of the narrative
voice by not mentioning any pronouns, only “I” and by not adding any gender-differentiating
adjectives about them. “Winterson’s narrator displays an ambiguous variety of stereotypes that
would help identify them as either male or female” (Hussein, 2019, p.698). The narrator is seen
as dominant and with power, for example when they leave Louise, these are stereotypical
masculine traits; but we can also see how they are weak and they desire a romantic relationship,
traits that are stereotypically designed for women. With this Winterson wants “the narrator to
exist as a human being without the encumbrance of gender stereotypes that automatically limit
the spectrum of emotions and actions expected of literary figures” (Hussein, 2019, p.699). Even
the characters in the novel express this ambiguity on the gender of the narrator as for example
when Louise says to them “When I saw you two years ago you were the most beautiful creature
male or female I had ever seen” (Winterson, 2014, p.84) or when the narrator says “Still waiting
for Mr. Right? Miss Right? And maybe all the little Rights?” (Winterson, 2014, p.10) By writing
that, Winterson aims to “emphasise the fact that the reader has to deal with a narrator whose
gender is unspecified” (Arman, 2012, p.9) Another element that makes clear this gender
ambiguity is the title of the novel, because if the body can be written, it becomes a discourse, and
a discourse can be changed, and rewritten. So then, if the body and the social constructs that
come with it can be written and rewritten, there should not be any specificity or imposition of the
binaries. Furthermore, there are a few clues that the narrator gives to confuse the reader into
deciding if the narrator is a male or a female which makes it even clearer that the narrator does
not have a specific gender. As for example, when the narrator says “I shall call myself Alice and
play croquet […] In Wonderland,” (Winterson, 2014, p.10) making the reader think that the
narrator is a female, but then they say “as forget-me-nots to girls who should have known better”
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(Winterson, 2014, p.11) with mentions to their affairs with women that lead the reader to the
belief that the narrator is a male because of our hetero-patriarchal society and culture. These
elements are used to make clear that gender “does not matter since the novel wants to move
beyond that difference” (Arman, 2012, p.9)

Finally, this ambiguity in gender comes hand in hand with the uncertainty of the
narrator’s sexuality. This makes clear that the novel and all its elements are fluid, they don’t fall
into the binaries and are not encapsulated into one or another but they are ambiguous and fluid.
As the narrator does not have a specific gender, there’s no possibility of knowing if they are
heterosexual or homosexual. Winterson builds a narrator who “steps away from either of the
labels in this binary system as a sexually fluid individual with sexual and romantic interests in
both women and men” (Hussein, 2019, p. 699) As I said before, Written on the Body is a
transgressive novel because most authors clearly mark the gender of their characters in order to
assign them roles that come with the specification of gender, but in Winterson’s novel “the
author allows the narrator to exist outside of this binary demarcation” (Hussein, 2019, p.700) of
having to be either heterosexual or homosexual. Also, when the narrator expresses desire for
both, men and women, the reader cannot encapsulate the narrator into these sexual binaries.
Here, “the narrative raises the issue about the associations between sex, gender and sexuality
which force the reader to frequently examine [their] assumptions” (Arman, 2012, p.7) Finally,
“[t]hrough this intricate play on gender and sexuality, the text does not only serve to deconstruct
categorisations according to gender and sexuality, but is challenging the very notion of gender
and sexuality as the basis of identity” (Arman, 2012, p.11) So then, the disruption of the
construction of binaries not only in gender but also in sexuality makes possible the rewriting of
social constructions by leaving a hetero-patriarchal society aside, and by having the possibility of
being fluid and being accepted even though there is no place for some people in the socially
imposed binaries. Because, as Winterson demonstrates, these binaries are not the only option,
there are more possibilities apart from the socially accepted ones.

To sum up, Written on the Body is a novel that dismantles the concept of the binaries in
both gender and sexuality. She bases or influences her work on the theoretical works of the 90s
when the novel was written, specifically, there is the influence of Butler’s “Gender Trouble”
because it discusses the problems with only having the ‘socially accepted’ gender identities and
the roles that come with it. This issue is an idea hugely discussed when talking about
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Winterson’s novel. Apart from that, there are elements in the novel that make the reader forget
about both genders that were almost always on literature and the roles that came with it. These
elements are mainly the non-binary narrator and the treatment of the narrator through the other
characters as well as the title of the novel. Finally, we also have the disruption of sexuality as a
hetero-patriarchal society that believes there are only two types of sexualities (homosexual and
heterosexual) but Winterson creates a narrator that has relationships with both men and women
and without knowing the gender of the narrator, the author wanted to have also ambiguity on
their sexuality.

Word count: 1501

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References

Arman, J. (2012). Gender, Sexuality and Textuality in Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body.

Butler, J. (2006). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge. 1-35.

Hussein, S. (2019). Deconstructing Gender Identity in Written on the Body by Jeanette

Winterson. International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 23(3). 697-702.
http://dx.doi.org/10.37200/IJPR/V23I3/PR190359

Winterson J. (2014). Written on the body. Vintage Books.