Who is Louise?

Have you ever read a novel and got to the end, and the narrator leaves you conjecturing whether or not one of the main characters is alive or an apparition? Well, Jeanette Winterson does just that in her novel “Written on the Body.” I must decipher the ending of this novel; I will search for clues within the novel that implies that the ending of the novel is actually the beginning in hopes of resolving the final chapter; is Louise alive, or did she reappear to the narrator as a figment of his/her imagination, and thus has the love affair been loss or gain.

In the beginning of the novel, the first line says, “Why is the measure of love loss? The narrator could be referring to Louise as being the person loved, and that she has died, and unfortunately if Louise did die, the narrator would never get a change to quantify their love. Seeing that the narrator had carried on numerous affairs, and had been in several relationships throughout the novel, I have doubts if he/she really loved Louise and if she actually exists to the narrator. Louise, female, married to Elgin, carries on an affair with the narrator whose gender is ambiguous. On page 20, why is Louise lying in a bed between sheets that were Garish? It makes no sense to me when on page 28 he/she apparently just met her. We have two lovers the narrator and Louise; Louise desires the narrator, and vows to never leave him/her, and upon declaring her love, she announces to her husband she is leaving him, and moves in with her lover. All this makes for an interesting believable love story, but unfortunately, their new found love did not last long; Elgin states that Louise has been battling leukemia for sometime, which she neglected to tell her lover. Because of Louise’s health, she was discarded by her lover. Here Louise is: a woman who has given up everything, left her husband of 10 years, came to her lover with only the clothes on her back, and they set up house. She made the ultimate sacrifice for her lover, and the narrator does not give her a voice to decide what is best for her. Right here is where I question if she really existed. At this point, I don’t like the heartless narrator, because upon further skimming through the novel, Louise is nowhere to be found. Is she lost forever? The narrator is left licking his/her wounds in an unsuccessful quest to locate her. As the narrator puts it, “Body and mind know how to hide from what is too sore to handle.” Needless to say, his quest is over. “It’s as if Louise never existed, like a character in a book. Did I invent her?” (189).

I believe that because of the narrator’s previous escapades in love affairs, Louise was an imaginary person. The narrator needed to be in a relationship where a person would give up the world for him/her, and when that was done, apparently did not know how to handle it, so to get him/her out of that relationship the discovery of Louise’s leukemia set the stage. As far as Louise reappearing at the end of the novel showing signs of her battle with leukemia, I think not; the narrator is only wishing to be given a second chance, and to gain the love which was loss. May Louise rest in peace.