Waiting Room & Written On The Body

In Jeanette Winterson’s Written On The Body and Lisa Loomer’s The Waiting Room, we come across many issues that are significant to our lives from sexuality and gender to health and patriarchal oppression. Winterson’s novel uses an ungendered narrator that allows us to transcend the binary determinants of sexuality (i.e., male versus female and heterosexual versus homosexual) and view sexuality in a universe not limited by such distinctions. In The Waiting Room Loomer presents us with another universe that is not limited like its real counterpart. For in her waiting room there are no limitations of time and space and we meet three women from three different eras, all of whom are a commentary in one way or another of the gender/sexuality limitations of their time. Both of these authors examine elements of identity and self-development that are pertinent to our time, by fashioning language, imagery, and setting into a means of conveying the problem of discovering the elusive self. A comparison of the themes, setting, and characterizations in these works will be rendered, showing how the pursuit of the self through love is a disease (Written On The Body) as is the pursuit of self through beauty (The Waiting Room). A conclusion which will address the different perspective of the authors on themes of gender, sexuality, and gender.

In Written On The Body, Jeanette Winterson gives us a novel whose s

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partial ability to communicate is used to demonstrate that communication is limited and that to try to examine anything as complex, beautiful, mysterious, and varied as human sexuality or gender from a binary perspective is just as limiting and limited. We see that the narrator’s self-examination is much more layered and complex than a binary reading would disclose: “Hello Louise. I was passing so I thought I might pop in.” Pop in. What a ridiculous phrase. What am I, a cuckoo clock?” We went down the hall together. Elgin shot his head out the study door. ‘Hello there. Hello, hello, very nice.” (Winterson 30) Life’s duality is not meant to imply there are two sides in black and white to everything. Instead, the duality of life as presented by Winterson is a diastole and systole where the body crumbles while the spirit still lives. Love, too, is dualistic because it brings with it great joy and light, but it also brings great pain and even words that can poison you. As the narrator tells us of Louise, she “opened up the dark places as well as the light” (Winterson 174). We see that dogmatic thinking would be easy but to truly think and open one’s mind to different ideas brings with it great joy and pain. The na
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Jeanette Winterson, Forgiveness Heavens, China Wanda, Hello Hello, Loomers Waiting, Waiting Loomer, Whereas Wintersons, Victorian England, Written Body, Hello Louise, written body, dogmatic thinking, sexuality gender, cultural norms, gender sexuality, self beauty, pursuit self, pursuit self beauty, narrator louise, love narrator, ability communicate, language imagery setting, self beauty disease, cliches cause trouble, self love disease,
Approximate Word count = 1915
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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