1164 Winterson, Jeanette
a pig. I asked her why she did it, and she said ‘You
never know until it’s too late.’ ” Jeanette, taking it
quite literally, proceeds to keep watch over the wom-
an’s husband: “It was hard to tell he was a pig. He
was clever, but his eyes were close together, and his
skin pink. I tried to imagine him without his clothes
on. Horrid.” Although she does not really think he
is an animal, she does not quite understand the figu-
rative meaning of the term pig and its associations,
seen in the way she still compares his physical traits
to those of the animal. With this in mind, she tries
to make sense of the “terrible conspiracy”:
There are women in the world.
There are men in the world.
And there are beasts.
What do you do if you marry a beast?This passage again illustrates the mechanics of a
child’s mind as she tries to work out logically what
one would do if one married a pig. As with the
previous example, the way she perceives the world is
expressed in simple, short sentences and questions.
We are given immediate access into Jeanette’s mind
and her wonder at the world of adults and marriage.
Additionally, she refers to familiar fairy tales to
try to make sense of this mystery, which illustrates
her trying to deal with the unfamiliar through the
familiar. Throughout the novel, she returns to fairy
tales as an attempt to make sense of the tensions and
conflicts she experiences as she begins to discover
her differences from those around her.
The innocence and purity of childhood is shown
most clearly in her love for her friend Melanie.
When, in her early teenage years, she discovers her
feelings for Melanie, she begins first of all to won-
der why, if she felt so happy being with her friend,
she also felt so uncomfortable, and needed to hide
her visits to Melanie from her mother. This is the
first inkling that her love for Melanie and budding
sexuality might be in conflict with what the church
preaches. After spending more time with Melanie,
she begins to question the teachings of the church,
which refer to the love of one person for another
person of the same sex as unnatural, sinful, and evil.
Jeanette cannot see how her love for Melanie can
possibly be sinful, since it comes from the goodness
of her heart. At one point, she says innocently, “I
love you almost as much as I love the Lord,” and she
sees Melanie as “a gift from the Lord, and it would
be ungrateful not to appreciate her.” When the pas-
tor confronts them both during a church service, he
asks, “Do you deny you love this woman with a love
reserved for man and wife?,” Jeanette answers, “No,
yes, I mean of course I love her.” As far as Jeanette
is concerned, her love for Melanie is as pure and
true as that of any loving relationship, regardless
of the gender of the persons involved. The pastor
admonishes her with the words of St. Paul regard-
ing “unnatural passions and the mark of the demon.”
Jeanette’s reply is, “To the pure all things are pure. . . It’s you not us.” Once again, she insists on the
purity of her feelings for Melanie, and in this she
makes the distinction between their innocence and
the guilt the others seem to have imposed on them.
Jeanette’s childhood innocence ends with this
confrontation, as we see that she slowly comes to
understand how her love for a woman counters the
compulsory heterosexuality preached by the church.
At one point, during her “exorcism,” we see her hav-
ing a conversation with an imaginary demon, who
helps her realize that if she wishes to follow her
heart to continue to love women, she will have a
difficult, different time. This marks the end of Jea-
nette’s naïveté and innocence and her entry into the
world of adulthood.
Wern Mei Yong
IndIvIduaL and SocIety in Oranges Are Not
the Only Fruit
A central theme of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
is the conflict between the individual and her or
his desires and those of the society. At the start of
the novel, Jeanette reveals that “I cannot recall a
time when I did not know that I was special.” Even
before Jeanette’s homosexuality (which sets her
apart from the rest of her community) is discovered,
we are presented with a young girl who is different
from those around her. Winterson also deliberately
avoids using the term lesbian throughout the novel,
to deflect attention away from the subject of homo-
sexuality and to highlight Jeanette’s struggle to fit
in as a struggle to maintain her individualism, quite
apart from her sexuality. In not using the term at