Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Jeannette Winterson

1999

The book is divided into 9 parts: Genesis - Exodus – Leviticus – Numbers – Deuteronomy – Joshua – Judges – Ruth.

The story follows the life story of a girl, Jeanette, same name and alter ego of the author, who is adopted at the age of seven years by a pair of evangelists. Jeanette grows and discovers gay love, and is forced to live in the community as a sin and fanatically religious bigotry frequented by the family. The family is outlined from the very first lines. While father, silently watching the TV, has a relatively neutral role, the mother, a soldier of Christ, is an obstructing presence, obsessive and paranoid. To prevent the baby being; carried to destruction is sent to school, the nursery, only later will be sent to school, and until then is the mother to give lessons. It wants to make his daughter as allocated by the Lord a missionary, his deafness exchange for mystical ecstasy, claims to cure his homosexuality and an exorcism and thinks he can solve all the problems of a teenager Jeanette offering for oranges.

The first of eight chapters that make up the novel is called Genesis. This already gives us assume that the development of this first chapter will be reconnected to the events of Genesis in the Bible. In fact in the Bible as the chapter of Genesis describes the creation of man and the origin of sin and suffering, the action of God among men, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, was presented the family: its components and the role of each of them. In particular, it highlighted the role of mother and daughter (the father is largely absent). The mother is a fanatical Evangelist, there is nothing that religion so much that you have as a missionary and plays the same role of Abraham in the Bible, that is to spread the word of God and feel called to serve Him in obedience and fidelity. Like Abraham, the mother of Jeanette represents the model of faith and obedience with which every man is called to respond to the action of God’s daughter is forced to follow in the footsteps of her mother, who, hauntingly, pushes her daughter to play continuously ecclesiastical actions.

It is very important to remember that in this chapter we find a story about a princess: she is so sensitive that no one can do something to help her. She goes in the forest and arrives to the hut of an old hunchback who knows the secret of magic, in fact the hunchback gives the princess something to occupy her hours and finally the princess forgets her pain. This artifice relates the story to Jeanette’s one; and how her mother's religion save her from distress. This chapter demonstrates Jeanette's admiration and love for her mother, like the princess admires the hunchback.

The next chapter is called Exodus. It reminded to the Bible in which is composed in to three parts: the description of the Jewish’s slavery in Egypt and their escape; the description of their voyage to reach the Promised Land; the description of the laws and instructions for the Tabernacle given by God. The same strategy was adopted by Jeanette in her novel. It deals with similar themes of flight and contains the story of the flight of the people of Israel from Egypt; the slavery is compared to her stay in hospital (Jeanette has physically become deaf, yet her mother and the other members of the congregation are blind to her hearing loss) the ; the voyage to the Promise Land can be represented by her difficulties at school; the laws are the support given to her by her community and older friends.

Jeanette's mother takes on the role of God on earth and therefore is the daughter of the Israelite people. She is able to flee the physical and ideological confines of her small home although her mother is hypocrisy and indifferent to her daughter because she is more interested in appearing very Christian by helping the church; this underlines Jeanette’s future rejection.