Jeanette Winterson writes of her experiences dealing with her religious upbringing in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.  She titles each chapter with a chapter title of the Bible.  Each chapter in Winterson’s novel presents some parallel or correlation to the biblical chapter that it is derived from.

 In the Bible’s chapter Exodus the Jewish people who are oppressed by the Egyptian Pharaoh are set free by Moses and follow him through the desert.  Moses is sent to tell the word of the Lord to the Israelites through the ten commandments and God’s instructions to the people.  Through their travels through the desert the Israelites deal with much uncertainty and question what is the purpose of their journey.

 These themes are carried out in the chapter Exodus in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.  In the beginning of the chapter Jeanette is, by law, forced to go to school.  Her mother does not want to let her go, but she has no other choice or she will find herself in prison.  This is similar to the occurrence in the Bible when the Egyptian Pharaoh is unwilling to let the Israelites leave Egypt.  Then God performs the ten plagues, and after much resistance and suffering of the Egyptian people the Pharaoh is forced to let them go.  Moses, a voice of the Lord, leads the Israelites uncertain through the desert.  Similarly, Jeanette embarks on an uncertain journey to school.

 At school Jeanette brings her religious beliefs with her.  All of her schoolwork relates back to religion and God.  In this part of the novel Jeanette represents Moses and her mother portrays God.  Her mother has molded her into a very religious person, a very strong believer.  She has filled Jeanette’s mind with the idea that she should become a missionary, and spread the word of God everywhere.  This is like God spreading his message to the Israelites through Moses.  Moses does everything that the Lord tells him to do, as Jeanette does with her mother.

 However, both Moses and Jeanette face opposition.  Several times the Israelites question the messages that Moses is delivering.  The people yell to Moses, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?  Was it to have us die of thirst with our children and our livestock?’  So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with these people?  A little more and they will stone me!”  (Exodus, Chapter 17, Verse 3)  When faced with questioning, the Lord provides Moses with the ability to perform acts which caused the people to believe, such as allowing water to flow from solid rock.  Eventually the Israelites followed Moses and the word of the Lord.

 Similar to these Biblical experiences, Jeanette deals with ridicule at school for her religious beliefs.  On the very first day of school she tells her class of her summer experiences with her church.  She is cut off by the teacher and laughed at by the other students.  Her teachers confront her on this matter, saying to her, “Jeanette, we think you may be having some problems at school.  Do you want to tell us about them?...You do seem rather preoccupied, shall we say, with God.”  (p.41)  Jeanette is ostracized at school for her beliefs.  She says, “It (the church) was clear and warm and made me feel happy.  At school there was only confusion.” (p.41)  Jeanette is made to feel ashamed about her beliefs to the point where she avoids the matter at school at school.  This “enraged my mother because I had abandoned biblical themes.” (p.48)  This is related to how God would not give up on the Israelites and having them believe in Him.  This is a difference between the novel and the Bible; Jeanette stops speaking of the Lord and church at school, while Moses continually spreads the message of the Lord.

 There are definite themes that Winterson has carried from Exodus in the Bible into Exodus in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.  From Moses and the Israelites escaping the tyrant Pharaoh of Egypt and Jeanette escaping her mother’s complete control, to Jeanette’s struggles at school and the Israelites struggles through the desert, there are definite parallels between the two books.  Winterson had a very strong religious upbringing, and she tied the themes from the Bible into her novel to portray that.

 Jeanette Winterson consciously relates the last chapter of her novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit to the Book of Ruth from the Bible.   Piousness as a character attribute is present in both sources, but the themes of parental loyalty, religious devotion and returning home connect the Book of Ruth and Winterson's chapter entitled Ruth.

 A strong connection between Ruth and Winterson is shown by the theme of returning home.  Jeanette left home under difficult circumstances; her mother no longer wanted her sinful daughter to stay in their home.  After being away for some time, Jeanette cannot help but return to her mother.  Jeanette explains "There are threads that help you find your way back, and there are threads that intend to bring you back . . . I'm always thinking of going back." (Winterson, 160)

 The theme of returning home does not connect Jeanette to Ruth, but to Naomi, her mother in law.  After she had lost her husband and two sons in Moab, Naomi decides it is time to return to Bethlehem.  Just as Naomi returns to the place she refers to as home, so does Jeanette return to the only home she had known.

 In the Book of Ruth, Ruth's actions show loyalty to Naomi, when she chooses to leave her homeland.  She refuses to let Naomi return home alone and pledges loyalty to her.  This is seen in the following passage:

" 'See now!' she [Naomi] said.  'Your sister in law has gone back to her people and to her god.  Go back after your sister in law!' But Ruth said 'Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you . . .Wherever you die I will die, there be buried . . . if aught but death separates me from you!' "  (Ruth 1:15-17)

She shows her determination and allegiance to her family as she returns to Bethlehem.  Even after Ruth has left Moab, she continues to show her love for Naomi.

 Jeanette also shows this loyalty to her mother in the last chapter.  She likens herself to Ruth because of the presence of this attribute.  As she waits for her mother, she ponders the meaning of family and why she returned to her mother after all that had separated them.  She thinks:

"Families, real ones, are chairs and tables and the right number of cups, but I had no means of joining one, and no means of dismissing my own; she had tied a thread around my button to pull me back whenever she pleased." (Winterson, 176)

Jeanette knows she will always feel some degree of loyalty to her mother, that no matter how much had occurred between them, she would always retain some sort of relationship or loyalty to her mother.

 In the Book of Ruth, the choices she made cause Ruth to be characterized by "heroic fidelity and piety" (Ruth 1:16) including her commitment to religion.  Similarly, even when she had been banished from the Society of the Lost, Jeanette's spirituality never falters.  She thinks to herself:

"I miss God.  I miss the company of someone utterly loyal.  I still don't think of God as my betrayer.  The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray.  I miss God who was my friend." (Winterson, 170)

Even when it seemed that Jeanette had reason to wonder why God had turned his back on her or betrayed her, she does not lose loyalty to him.  Her commitment to loving God had remained even when she could not participate in the Society's services.  Just as Ruth promised herself to devotion to Naomi's God, Jeanette was devoted to the God that her mother had always embraced.

 There is a strong correlation between the themes presented in the Book of Ruth with those presented by Winterson in her final chapter.  Because of the piety shown by both Jeanette and Ruth, it can be argued that Winterson sees herself as a Ruth figure.  Just as the writers of the Book of Ruth characterize Ruth as a hero for her loyalty and devotion, Winterson characterizes herself in a similar manner.  Because of her loyalty to God, her obligation to her mother, and her eventual return to the place that had scorned her, Winterson looks upon herself as a hero.

In Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson tells the tale of a  mother-daughter relationship and the way that this relationship is affected by the mother's strict, eccentric religion. The daughter, Jeanette, has been raised with her mother's very odd religious values and has always been an active participant in the church. But as she grows older and begins to explore her own sexuality, her relationship with her mother begins to fall apart. The church, which has always been like a family to Jeanette, will no longer accept her when its members learn that she has had a lesbian affair.

Winterson has broken the novel up into chapters, which are named after various books in the Bible. The chapter in which Jeanette is confronted by the church in regards to her romance with Melanie is called Joshua. When comparing the Joshua of the novel with the Joshua of the Bible, I saw many connections. One in particular that stood out to me is the fact that both the chapter and the biblical book simplify some long and complicated process. The biblical book of Joshua simplifies the long and complicated process by which Israelite tribes ended up settling in Canaan. This is similar to Joshua in the novel, which makes very simple Jeanette's repenting of her "sin" of loving Melanie.

In reality, switching gears from being a truly good person to a truly evil person is a major and complex change. After all, there exists a clear, vivid contrast between what is good and what is evil, especially in Jeanette's house. A change as vast as the one from good to evil is not a transformation that occurs abruptly. Winterson's simplification of Jeanette's decision to repent also indicates to readers that her repent was not genuine. It is quite evident that Jeanette is a lesbian, and the disapproval and anger she receives from her mother and the other members of the church is not going to change that. The real reason for Jeanette's so-called repent is simply human, and obviously not the result of a desire to make peace with God:"I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible; besides, I hadn't eaten for two days." (109).  Dire hunger and pure mental exhaustion at having been locked in a dark closet for thirty-six hours were likely the main factors that led Jeanette to agree to repent. Jeanette's decision was not for the right reasons in  respect to her faith, and is therefore obsolete in its incorrect motive.

In the novel's Joshua chapter, Winterson has related Jeanette's agreement to return to good to the Israelite's tribes' settlement in Canaan in the biblical book of Joshua. Again, the two versions are related in the aspect that they both simplify two long, complicated processes- one of which would have been just that had Jeanette's choice to repent been genuine.

The Chapter, Leviticus within the novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by  Jeanette Winterson and the Chapter, Leviticus within the Bible share a common theme of perfection. Both instruct on how to achieve perfection within God's eyes. We are in essence given two deinitions of perfection, one the religious view, the other Jeanette's view. Jeanette is forced to find her own definition when she realizes she disagrees with the religious perception of perfection.

Within this chapter Jeanette is instructed on how to achieve perfection and it is when she hears this sermon that she developed her first theological disagreement. "Perfection, the man said, was a thing to aspire to. It was the condition of the Godhead, it was the condition of the man before the Fall. It could only be truly realized in the next world, but we had a sense of it, a maddening, impossible sense, which was both a blessing and a curse. Perfection, he announced, is flawlessness."(P.60) This statement of perfection by the man implies that it is an impossible achievement. That perfection is something we must attain but can never possibly achieve except maybe in the after life. The man states that this is something that God can and only has achieved and the people here must attain to it but will never become it.

Leviticus in the Bible seems to relay the same type of message to its readers. It offers a number of things we are to do to try to achieve perfection but it acknowledges that we most likely will not succeed. It offers many things to do when in fact we do sin recognizing that man is in fact filled with flaws and will sin. Leviticus acknowledges that God is perfect and when placing offerings to God they must be of unblemished animals - objects which in themselves are still perfect.

Jeanette does not explain what exactly she does not agree with in this statement on perfection but one can interpret her feelings through the fairy tale that follows the sermon. In this fairy tale the prince incorporates those views of the 'religious': "He wants a wife that is without blemish inside or out, flawless in every respect. I want a woman who is perfect."(p.61) The prince comes to learn though that perfection is not flawlessness but rather "the perfect balance of qualities and strengths. Perfectness is in fact harmony and balance"(p. 64) We can assume that this is the definition of perfection for Jeanette. She recognizes that humans will not be flawless. We are incapable of being flawless. Rather the most perfect being is that being which can obtain harmony, a balance of both strengths and weaknesses.

Jeanette recognizes a true perfection that both the bible and the man who gave the sermon were too blind to see. God does not intend for us to be exactly like him, that is impossible. Rather we should try to imitate him in as many ways as we can. More importantly we have to achieve a harmony within ourselves, a balance of all that God has placed within us. The religious are obsessed with a perfection that they can never achieve. Within their definition they will never be presentable for God and thus will always be concerned with their imperfections. Jeanette recognizes what God has given us here on earth, the good and the bad, and knows that perfection is the balance between it all within ourselves. With the acknowledgement of this she can obtain perfection and peace within herself.

Return to Index