Oranges are
not the only
fruit
Jeanette Winter
first year of publication:
Muna Al Helo 1985
12-11-2020
, Book review, Oranges are not the only fruit, Jeanette Winter
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
John Mullan
Sat 20 Oct 2007
Narratively, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is built on a particular irony - a
contradiction in which it takes some sly delight. It can be simply stated. The
Bible is the all-controlling authority to which the narrator's fundamentalist
mother makes her defer, yet it is also the book on which the novel is based. The
young Jeanette knows the Bible as a work of warning, prohibition and
eschatological fear. (When she goes to school she duly terrifies the other
children by explaining the fiery judgment that will soon be visited upon them.)
Yet, though this is a story of the heroine's escape from her Scripture-obsessed
mother and the Christian sect to which she belongs, the Bible gives shape and
meaning to that story.
The novel is divided into eight sections, with the titles of the first eight books of
the Bible, from Genesis to Ruth. These make sense of the different phases of
Jeanette's life, from the age of seven to that of 16 or so. She herself looks to
these Scriptural chapters for significance. After an official letter commands her
mother to send her daughter to school ("the Breeding Ground"), Jeanette
describes her confusing experiences in "Exodus". "When the children of Israel
left Egypt, they were guided by the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire
by night". She, however, is led out of bondage without any guide. In Joshua,
where her "Unnatural Passion" for Melanie is discovered, she rebels against
her mother's tyranny. "It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That
walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet".
The narrator can hardly help using the Bible for her own story. This is her
expertise. "We had a lot of Bible quizzes at church and my mother liked me to
win." Her mother always has a Bible at the ready. Whenever she leaves home
she takes "the travel size one" with her. She reads it aloud as she and her
daughter eat bacon and eggs ("nice in a way"). So the Bible becomes the
medium through which Jeanette expresses her own strength of mind. As a
teenager she starts teaching a Bible study class and is indignant when, as a
punishment for her sexual sins, the pastor bans her from doing so.
Indeed, Scriptural congress is next to sensual congress. She and Melanie
consummate their affection via the Good Book. "We read the Bible as usual,
and then told each other how glad we were that the Lord had brought us
together." A couple of sentences later, they are overpowered. "And it was
evening and it was morning; another day." A neat version of the time shift that
tells you of sexual satisfaction, for it alludes to the fifth verse of Genesis. "And
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