Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit By Jeanette Winterson

Authors Experiences in Creative Writing Styles Many authors will write a piece of themselves into the stories they create. We see evidence of this through Jeanette Winterson’s novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. This novel combines both the writing styles of an autobiography as well as fictional writing. Throughout Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit we are able to analyze aspects of the story to uncover the truths of her life as well as the fictional aspects. Jeanette writes with what she describes as “Authenticity … a genuineness there that comes from you that is passed out” (Vintage Books). This authenticity that Jeanette describes is a passion from an authors own experience that allows readers to place trust in what the author is trying

Autobiographies express facts about the writer’s life, whereas invention or fictional writing is a flow of creativity and thoughts created within a story. Jeanette Winterson’s use of both of these styles formed in a way that is seamless and fluent. As readers we are not always sure which parts of the story are true and which are not, but we are given the overall idea of Jeanette’s life. An example of this in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is when young Jeanette gives Elsie her artwork sample “… I took my sampler back from Elsie Norris and entered it for the needlework class. I still think it was a masterpiece of its kind; it had the lettering all in black, … and in the bottom corner a sort of artist’s impression of the terrified damned. Elsie had framed it so it looked quite professional.” (Winterson 43-44). We discovered in our English class that Elsie was a fictional character that Jeanette had made up to make segments of the story to lighten the reader’s perspective. Through the voice and the tone of the novel we would have been able to believe that Elsie was an actual friend of Jeanette’s. Displaying the authenticity and genuine passion that Jeanette places in the