Written On The Body

Despite the varied and numerous sexual relationships in which the narrator has engaged, the narrator has a strong moral sense regarding marital commitment. The narrator’s respect for marriage is ironic as many of the narrator’s prior lovers have been married women and the narrator acknowledges a susceptibility to become involved sexually with married women. Though the narrator finds married women irresistible, the narrator’s attempts to rationalize the affairs suggests that the narrator has sufficient integrity to feel uncomfortable on some level with infidelity.

In an effort to justify these affairs, the narrator notes that the vulnerability of past lovers to extramarital affairs was largely predicated upon boredom and tedium. The narrator describes one such past lover who explains that her only alternative to an affair was “a degree at the Open University” (14). The same woman confesses that her husband is a good man; she does not wish to hurt him by disclosing the extramarital affair. The narrator rationalizes the impact of affairs on such marriages by arguing that the alleviation of tedium provided by these sexual escapades have enabled wives to return to the safe monotony of monogamous marriages.