Throughout the novel, Written on the Body, by Jeannette Winterson, we are introduced to a wide variety of rather peculiar characters.  There is the anarcho-feminist, the voyeouristic lovemaker, and even the hot house clothes burner.  Not only do these characters seem to do an excellent job at raising the eyebrow of the reader, but also share one important charactertistic.  This lies in the fact that all of the romances of the narrator are shared with women.  If we were to look at this novel in a rather traditional sense, it would seem obvious that the narrator is indeed a man.  And then there’s Crazy Frank… 

                  The introduction of a male romance into the narrators repertoire leads to a shift into rather or not the narrator is male or female.  The introduction of Crazy Frank on page 92 sends us back to square one.  Now we are left asking, is this is a bi-sexual male or female?  Again, Winterson does an excellent job at keeping us in the dark.

                Although Crazy Frank may be a male, he still shares the same avant-garde qualities as the narrator’s previous lovers.  As the text states, “I had a boyfriend once called Crazy Frank.  He had been brought up by midgets although he himself was over six feet tall.  He loved his adopted parents and used to carry them one on each shoulder.  I met him doing exactly that at a Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition in Paris.  We went to a bar and then on to another bar and got very drunk and while we were in a hot shot bed in a cheap pension he told me about his passion for minatures”(Winterson, 92-3).  Although this excerpt paints the picture of a rather strange man, it in no way gives us any proof as to the narrator’s sex.

                As we read on further in this passage, little clues seem to be included by Winterson to keep us guessing.  One area in which we could interpret the narrator as feminine is when he/she is describing Crazy Frank’s piercings.  The text states, “Frank had the body of a bull, an image he intensified by wearing great gold hoops through his nipples.  Unfortunately he had joined the hoops with a chain of heavy gold links.  The effect should have been deeply butch but in fact it looked rather like the handle of a chanel shopping bag” (Winterson, 93).  The correlation between Frank’s nipple rings and a chanel bag could give us the idea that the narrator is a female.  It could be said that a woman would be more prone to such a description because she herself has been brought up to use and enjoy purses.

                    Although the previous paragraph may sway some readers into believing the narrator is a female, another area of the novel is included to keep us guessing.  This can be seen when Crazy Frank describes his sexual preference.  The text states, “Hi didn’t want to settle down.  His ambition was to find a hole in every port.  He wasn’t fussy about the precise location” (Winterson, 93).  It seems obvious that Crazy frank is talking about sex, but what is interesting is what type of sex he is referring to.  By using such a line as “he wasn’t fussy about the precise location”, it seems to be hinting at the fact that Frank could be bisexual.  If the reader was to interpret the sentence in that way, it may lead to the conclusion that narrator could also be a bisexual male.

                   Although it is still unclear as to whether or not the narrator is a male or female character, it seems to do little to hinder the story as a whole.  Winterson’s impressive writing avoids telling us the true sex of the character.  Instead, we are left in this grey area, carefully dissecting each part of the story to find the truth.