Written on the Body is a love story written from the point of view of the genderless and nameless narrator. “The self-narrating character strives to obscure his or her sex and gender, speaking in the first person and avoiding personal pronouns and self-description as male or female” (McAvan 437); these things, coupled with Winterson's creative use of feminine and phallic symbols, really keep the narrator's gender hidden. Winterson uses the symbols of gardens and fruits to achieve this. The garden motif can be considered feminine and also a symbol of happiness. The fruit motif symbolizes femininity and fertility, and can also be seen as a phallic symbol in the novel. The numerous mentions of Adam and Eve, who resided in the proverbial "ultimate" garden and consumed the "ultimate" fruit, also play a role in the garden and fruit motifs. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay Generally, gardening is a hobby enjoyed primarily by women. Certainly, there are men who enjoy gardening, but in the text the use of gardens is considered feminine. The narrator usually mentions the garden in happy moments or uses the garden to evoke happy feelings. One of the most telling examples of happiness is when the narrator returns to the apartment he shared with Louise: "I was strangely delighted to be in my own house... It was the place of sorrow and of separation, a place of mourning, but with the… garden full of roses, I found hope. We had been happy here” (Winterson 163). It is clear that in this case the garden is an external symbol of the happiness that the narrator feels internally; It’s a happiness that hasn’t been felt in a while. Perhaps the narrator is referring in the passage above to this scene from the beginning of the text: “We were quiet together after making love. We watched the afternoon sun fall on the garden, the long shadows of early evening drawing patterns on the white wall... That afternoon, it seemed as if I had always been here with Louise, we were familiar” (Winterson 82). It is very plausible that the narrator is indeed referring to this example of contentment in the garden. In one part of the novel, the narrator has a nightmare: “I woke up sweaty and cold…I went into the garden, glad of the sudden dampness beneath my feet” (Winterson 42). Here the narrator uses the garden to comfort himself and bring about happier feelings than the nightmare, which was frightening. Another very symbolic example is when the narrator talks about the house and says, "I cut some winter jasmine in the garden to shreds and brought it inside" (Winterson 108). The narrator was trying to use flowers to bring happiness to this dreary cottage, but the result was not as hoped. Instead, the narrator says, “It sounded like a nun in a slum” (Winterson 108). This sentence implies that jasmine, like the nun, seems out of place in the house, compared to a slum. In one scene, the narrator uses the garden to experience feelings of happiness, but in a different way than those mentioned above: "I took [the letters] into the garden and burned them one by one and I thought how easy it was to destroy them. the past and how hard it is to forget” (Winterson 17). In this case the narrator has no immediate positive reaction, but simply uses the garden as a starting point to reacha happier state of being. This same type of situation is found in the novel, when the narrator speaks of relationships: “Most buds have worms. You spray, you wiggle, you hope the hole won't be too big, and you pray for sunshine. Just let the flower bloom and no one will notice the jagged edges. I thought of me and Jacqueline. I was desperate to take care of us” (Winterson 28). Faced with a difficult situation, the narrator begins to think about flowers and gardening in an attempt to achieve contentment. While gardens are often seen as symbols of femininity and fertility, fruits are even more representative of these attributes. This is an interesting point because the gendered qualities of the garden and the fruit also impart gendered qualities to the “genderless” narrator. At one point, the narrator says that “the pomegranate…[is the] fruit of the womb” (Winterson 91). This is important because the narrator admits that fruits have gendered attributes. Another feminine fruit mentioned in the novel is the pear: “[Louise] splits a pear; one of his own pears from the garden” (Winterson 37). The pear is often seen as a symbol of female sexuality, usually due to its shape; the rounded part appearing to visually represent a woman's hips or bust. However, this same pear shape can also be seen as a phallic symbol. As a phallus, the pear may possess the same symbolism of fertility as that of all fruits, but it definitely classifies it as male. There are also other examples of phallic fruits in the novel. The narrator mentions that “Playboy regularly features stories about asparagus, bananas, and leeks” (Winterson 36). The banana could be considered the phallic fruit par excellence due to its shape, and the narrator mentions it again a few pages later: “There could not be a more unromantic moment than [eating bread] and yet [it] excites me more than any Playboy banana” (Winterson 39). These phallic symbols serve in some way to “undo” the feminine gender attributes of the fruit. In a sense, the feminine and masculine qualities of the fruits oppose each other, leaving the narrator without gender attributes. However, it could be argued that the narrator possesses both masculine and feminine characteristics. Jennifer Smith says of this idea: "Just as the narrator cannot unequivocally align with one gender to the exclusion of the other, the narrator does not escape both genders simply by occupying each end of the spectrum." The novel repeatedly mentions the story of Adam and Eve from the Bible; this matches the garden and fruit motifs. Generally, the idea of ​​the highest paradise and the place of happiness is the Garden of Eden: the Lord God planted a garden in the east in Eden, and there he placed the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of course, the Garden of Eden is where Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it was generally believed to be an apple: Now the serpent was more cunning as any beast of the field that the Lord God had created. And he said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We can eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, Thou shalt not eat thereof, neither shalt thou touch it, lest thou die. Then the serpent said to the woman: You will do it. not surely die. Because God knows that the day you.