Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit 1163ity destroys the one thing of which he might be
proud—his marriage.
Jennifer McClinton-Temple
wiNTErSoN, JEaNETTE Oranges
Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit charts the sexual
awakening of a young girl named Jeanette and
the impact her homosexuality has on her relation-
ships with her mother, the church community she
lives in, and God. Brought up by a strict Christian
mother, she is indoctrinated at a young age and
undergoes training to be a missionary. Her mother’s
extreme views mold Jeanette from a young age.
Her religious outlook alienates her from her school
community, resulting in numerous arguments with
teachers, students, and parents. The incongruity of
her views, expressed with childlike innocence, with
those of the ones her mother labels “heathens,” pro-
vides for some of the novel’s comedy.
Jeanette Winterson’s main concern in the novel,
which won the Whitbread Prize for first novel in
1985, is with stories and how they are used to explain
the world we live in. More important, she explores
how stories create personal identity. Ultimately
there is no single story that explains the world, and
everyone creates his or her own story to best reflect
who they are. This is seen in the way Winterson’s
narrative is an interwoven web of different stories.
The novel is a mix of the personal account of Jea-
nette’s emotional and spiritual growth—made up of
stories told by her mother and Jeanette’s older friend
Elsie, biblical stories, and philosophical rumina-
tions—together with fairy tales and mythical stories
set in unknown times and lands. The fairy tales serve
as analogies or parables to her personal account of
growing up. They are also a means of questioning
commonly accepted notions about what constitutes
right and wrong, good and evil, natural and unnatu-
ral. This intertextual cross-referencing is reflected in
the structure of the novel as well, as each chapter is
given a heading taken from the Bible. Winterson (b.
1959) adapts the central concerns of each biblical
chapter to the concerns of her novel. This is another
illustration that no single story—not even the Bible,
which for most of Western culture is the single
most important story, or collection of stories—holds
grand sway over any other story. There are only
different narratives and therefore different ways of
looking at things.
Wern Mei YongcHILdHood in Oranges Are Not the
Only Fruit
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a tale of growing
up, of learning to come to terms with the pressures
of society, and of overcoming the conflicts between
oneself and those pressures. Winterson’s tale is told
from the point of view of a child, enhanced by that
child’s naive perceptions and tone. This adds to
some of the lightheartedness of the story, but also
to its poignancy. A first example is when Jeanette
describes her mother:She had never heard of mixed feelings. There
were friends and there were enemies.
Enemies were: The Devil (in his many
forms)
Next Door
Sex (in its many forms)
Slugs
Friends were: God
Our dog
Auntie Madge
The Novels of
Charlotte Bronte
Slug pelletsAlthough this excerpt describes the way her
mother classifies things in the world, based on
the binary opposites “enemies” and “friends,” it
also reveals how Jeanette comes to understand her
mother’s way of thinking. The economical way of
expressing her mother’s classifications suggests the
simplicity of a child and contributes to some of the
novel’s comedy. This is seen in the incongruity of
including in her list such sinful items as the devil
along with such mundane items as slugs, slug pellets,
their dog, and Auntie Madge.
Another comic episode that brings out Jeanette’s
innocence is found at the start of the chapter enti-
tled “Numbers,” when she relates how “there was a
woman in our street who told us all she had married