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Kadri Koop
Dr. Stephan Besser
Literature and the History of the Body
21 Sept. 2010

The Representation of Leukemia in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body


"Why is the measure of love loss?" asks the narrator of the book in the beginning of the novel
(9). The protagonist whose gender is not specified falls in love with a married women Louise
who a little into the novel turns out to have developed leukemia. The discovery of the disease
changes the course of the relationship between the two lovers – the narrator decides to leave
Louise as she believes only without her Louise will be able to seek for cure. The narrator is
convinced that she is ought to sacrifice her love for Louise for the sake of Louise and her health.
“Docking here inside Louise may heal a damaged heart, on the other hand it may be an
expensively ruinous experiment" contemplates the narrator as she doubts whether leaving Louise
is the right thing to do (62). However, eventually the narrator decides for Louise and leaves her,
thinking it would be best for Louise's condition – after all, Louise has leukemia and is about to
die in one point. Even though according to the doctors Louise still has many years to live, the
narrator is frightened of Louise's life being determined by medical diagnosis. Although everyone
is going to die at one point, when death becomes a fact it is even more painful to accept it. The
novel tells a story of how fear, setting boundaries and limiting, are able to take over the course of
one’s life. The fear in the novel is derived from a loveone suffering from leukemia that
represents various figurative meanings. The current essay is focusing on the metaphorical
meanings of leukemia in the novel that can only be conveyed by using this particular disease.

The novel swirls around Louise who for the most part is not taking part of the narration as a
“real” character. After the discovery of her illness she becomes an illness: the loveones of Louise
overshadow her with their personal fears and misperceptions of the disease and Louise becomes
a body who, even though, disappearing from the story remains the main subject under
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discussion. She becomes a body that the narrator writes on. The disease empties Louise. It
overtakes her allowing the loveones to overshadow Louise with their fears.“Your flesh is my
flesh” states the narrator who has ejected and destroyed Louise because of the fear of losing her (106).
The narrator decides to lose Louise due to her fear of losing her. Even though the narrator asks herself,
"[b]ut why treat her like an invalid before she is an invalid?" she loses the ability to see beyond
Louise's ill body and treats Louise as if she was invalid (104-105). The narrator fears losing
Louise they way she is used to her – beautiful and healthy. The illness will change her body and
Louise will become diseased looking and lose her beauty she fears. The fear of losing healthy
and beautiful Louise forces the narrator to leave her love. Ironically, she finds herself next to a
plump-looking Gail who resembles an awful opposite of Louise. Gail as a character symbolizes
the narrator’s biggest fear coming true – Louise changing and finding herself next to someone
who is not even Louise. Moreover, Gail becomes to vocalize the narrators doubt – what if she
should have not left Louise, what if she did not do the “best thing” for Louise?

Even though leukemia has long medical history, modern medicine does not know much about
the disease and how to tackle it. Leukemia has remained an enigmatic disease: the patients might
live long despite developing leukemia. Often the patient’s body does not develop any tangible
“evidence” of the disease. It is only the doctor’s verdict that the patient’s body is sick and at one
point going to give up the fight against the disease. In the novel, no biological evidence of
Louise’s disease are brought up, there are only the narrator’s speculations. She does not know
how Louise’s leukemia develops and in what condition her lover is which enables the narrator to
eroticize and romanticize Louise’s body through her condition. Moreover, the long time-span of
the developing of the disease leads the narrator to feel the loss of Louise: knowing that Louise is
still alive but not whit her is more painful than losing someone through death. As she walks out
on Louise, the narrator becomes to realize the love for Louise through losing her. The narrator’s
pain-seeking, self-inflicted nature is similar with leukemia: the disease is about destroying the
body itself as “the white T-cells have turned bended” not obeying the rules of the body, “they are the
enemies on the inside” (115). The narrator is causing herself to suffer becoming her own enemy.

“Written on the Body” is about a fear of the disease being more powerful than the disease itself. The fear
that dictates the life of the narrator leads to overshadow Louise who is diagnosed to be sick. Even though
Louise is promised many years to live, her life becomes determined by the diagnosis of leukemia.
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Louise’s physical condition is not worse than the narrator’s. Moreover, as the narrator’s self-inflicted
nature could be compared with the medical condition of leukemia as both – the narrator and leukemia –
are eventually causing death through one’s body destroying itself. Leukemia does not become fatal for
only the patient but also for the loveones – the fear of the disease sets boundaries that destroy one’s life
often leading one to realize the value of something only when it is gone as the measure of love becomes
loss.

Works Cited
Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body. London: Vintage, 1993. Print.

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