"You play; you win." | The Passion

There she meets her husband, who literally steals her heart. After leaving & meeting Henri, they set off to reclaim her heart from her husband’s house. 

I need to revisit The Passion. I read it quickly in my first year to keep up with term & the reading list. I borrowed rather than bought a copy to cut down on costs. It was quickly supplanted by 'Oranges for which I cared a great deal more. Even so, I remember reading of the above adventure. The concept has always moved me. Winterson's metaphor made literal; the lost heart recovered.

Passion, to Winterson, is a love of life, a love both of the defeats and of the victories. Passion is playing at life without pacing oneself. Passion is betting everything on the rounds of life. When Villanelle gives her heart to her wealthy lover, she has exhibited passion. She loses, but because she already is a gambler at life, she is not destroyed; she instead becomes a wiser gambler at life than she was before her loss.

One troubling aspect of Villanelle is the manner in which she describes love. She always seems to speak of someone stealing her heart rather than her giving it to someone. Yet she understands the gamble of playing with her heart. In the middle of the war, she is grateful for the absence left by her heart. Salvadore wishes to exchange hearts with Villanelle yet it has been stolen by another. It seems that she gave it or gambled it, not that it was stolen. She speaks of her desire for someone to steal Henri’s heart, but does not realize that she is the one to whom he has given it already. Why does Villanelle refer to her heart as stolen when it was actually lost in a wager? She speaks that way because she fancies herself as a smart gambler and one who does not lose.

- students.depaul.edu/~jabsher/undergrad/novel/Youplay.doc