Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit Essay

Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ is set in the 1960’s where homosexuality was still frowned upon in society, and especially in a Christian community. However, across the sixties, the Sexual Revolution and Second Wave Feminism spread throughout the nation, encouraging the breakdown of the conservative views on sexuality. Despite this, in Winterson’s novel, the protagonist, Jeanette finds herself raised in a Pentecostal home by an extremely religious, and empowering mother, who despises her daughter’s choice of sexuality. The novel reflects Winterson’s own crucial events from her early life, which we see her mainly focusing on the evolution and development of the relationship between the mother and the protagonist, and how

There were friends and there were enemies” . Jeanette disapproves of her mother’s dualistic viewpoint on the world, where she only sees a system of binaries, either good or evil, or black or white. Jeanette’s mother signifies the stubborness of traditional religious beliefs and disregards the idea of other options that are in between these binaries, which Jeanette discovers once she grows older and becomes a lesbian, falling into that middle category her mother condemns as homosexuality goes against her mother’s dualistic view, these views that have oppressed Jeanette through her early years of childhood and adulthood. Throughout the first few pages of the novel, Jeanette reveals more of her mother’s personality “She was wrong, as far as we were concerned, but right as far as she was concerned, and really, that’s what mattered” , the protagonist discloses that the mother is a strong-willed woman who likes to be right, the phrase “that’s what mattered” determines this as it implies that the mother’s opinion or decision outweighs any of the other’s view, for instance Jeanette’s or her