Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body, is an artistically written examination of love. The plot line, however cliched, is not the point. Winterson does a masterful job of allowing us to skip gender labels, and contemplate love at a level of depth that most of us never reach. The two elements that redeem this novel from its threatened triteness is the author's refreshing vagueness regarding gender, and her unique insights into the deepest elements of compassionate love. A more obscure theme is one which implies that the truly profound, intimate love that we seek is parental in nature.
             Out of weariness from failed relationships, the narrator (who I am identifying as a man for this paper) decides to settle for a safe-harbor relationship with someone he does not love, but who can provide him with some semblance of what he considers a normal home life. Jacqueline is a zoo worker - a nurturer. What she offers him is a maternal kind of comfort, which is what he is really seeking, to soothe his jangled emotions. The narrator drops hints of his parent-child relationship with Jacqueline:
             "It was Jacqueline's job to make everything bright and shiny again." "She was good with me." "Jacqueline made me a sandwich and asked if I had any washing-up I'd like done." "She brought her own mop." "She never bothered me when I said, 'Don't bother me,' and she didn't cry when I shouted at her. In fact she shouted back. She treated me like a big cat in the Zoo. She was very proud of me." "What am I? I feel like a kid in the examination room faced with a paper I can't complete."
             Although not contiguous, these phrases consistently reveal the narrator's understanding of the adult longing for mom.
             Though the primary thrust of Winterson's story is the sexually-charged passion between two people who genuinely love one a...