Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

by

Jeanette Winterson

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Themes and Colors
Storytelling, Fantasy, and Invention Theme Icon
Religion and Control Theme Icon
Women and Womanhood Theme Icon
Transgression and Forgiveness Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religion and Control Theme Icon

Jeanette and her mother’s lives revolve around a religion that is evangelical, strict, and often fatalistic. While the church offers solace, community, and even fun to the young Jeanette, as she grows older and discovers her sexuality, the church becomes a place of hate, control, and fear. Even when Jeanette breaks free of the church, she cannot leave behind these vestiges of her religious upbringing, which prevent her from feeling at peace with who she is. In giving the fictional version of herself this ending, Winterson argues that the total control of her religious upbringing can never be fully escaped. She will always bear its scars, and the pain she endured will never leave her.

When Jeanette is a very young child, religion is an important part of her life, and even a joyful one. Despite her mother’s strict beliefs and disdain for “heathens” like the family that lives next door, Jeanette feels drawn to rather than repelled by the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric of her family’s church. Religion makes her feel as if she has power, agency, and purpose—all needed things in a household where she is often treated badly by the people who are supposed to love her most. However, religion is also the means by which Jeanette’s mother controls her daughter. Throughout Jeanette’s childhood, her mother tells her that the Devil himself is everywhere and the world is full of sin. Jeanette’s mother dreams that Jeannette will grow up to be a missionary, and she does not even let Jeanette go to school until the government threatens her with legal action—she sees school as a “breeding ground” for sin, and wants to keep Jeanette’s education strictly religious for as long as possible.

The tension between religion controlling and empowering Jeanette comes to a head when she falls in love with Melanie, a high schooler in her church. Jeanette and Melanie have both been warned about the dangers of “unnatural passions,” but when they begin their love affair, neither feels that what they are doing is wrong. When the girls are eventually discovered, they are condemned as sinners, and Jeanette is subjected to an “exorcism”—during which her mother keeps her sequestered in the parlor of her house without food or water for days. During this time, Jeanette has a hallucinatory vision of an orange demon, who tells Jeanette that everyone has a demon, and her demon has emerged to help her decide what it is that she wants. If Jeanette “keeps” her demon, the demon says, she’ll have a difficult life—but a life that might be worth all that difficulty. Jeanette resolves to keep her demon around but pretend to repent. When the demon reappears days later, it tells Jeanette that there is “no going back” from her decision.

The demon represents another kind of religious control. The demon is born of and yet directly opposed to the Evangelical values Jeanette was raised with, and when she relinquishes herself to it she shirks the religious control of her mother’s religion but enters under the control of all the demon represents—darkness, abandon, and opposition. Where Jeanette’s life up until this point has been controlled by the fire-and-brimstone, end-of-days rhetoric of her church, she now realizes she has the option to relinquish control to a different “master.” Keeping the demon around will allow Jeanette to live her truth, but also to forever be enslaved to the concept of control—someone, or something, will always have its hooks in her. This is the effect of Jeanette’s upbringing—even in opting to be “free,” she will always be beholden to the guilt, shame, and longing which are the products of her childhood indoctrination.

The hold that Jeanette’s religious upbringing continues to have on her is also apparent in how the novel is organized: the chapters are named for the first eight books of the Bible, beginning with Genesis and ending with Ruth. In this way, religion exerts a formal control over the novel as well as a thematic one. Going even deeper, this organization of the book reflects the older Jeanette’s allegiance to the forms and constraints of religion, even within the bounds of her safe space—storytelling—and even once she is presumably separated a little more physically and emotionally from the events of her childhood. Jeanette has been freed from the emotional control religion once had on her, but pays homage to it—or reveals how bound she still is to its impact on her relationship to storytelling and the narrative lens through which she views the world—in choosing to structure the novel in a way that reflects the structure and themes of several books of the Bible.

At the end of the novel, Jeanette is right where she started—in her parents’ kitchen, watching her mother listen to religious broadcasts on the radio. Jeanette fears she will never fully escape her mother’s control, describing her mother’s influence on her through the parallel fantasy story of Winnet and the sorcerer—when Winnet left her adoptive father, he crept into her room disguised as a mouse and tied an invisible thread around the button of her coat, so that he would always be able to tug her back to him. Though Jeanette is living on her own, having escaped her hometown and her stifling religious community, Jeanette feels as if there is a thread around her coat button which her mother will forever be able to tug on whenever she pleases.

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Religion and Control Quotes in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Below you will find the important quotes in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit related to the theme of Religion and Control.
1. Genesis Quotes

Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn’t matter what. She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies. Enemies were: The Devil (in his many forms), Next Door, Sex (in its many forms), Slugs. Friends were: God, Our dog, Auntie Madge, The Novels of Charlotte Brontë, Slug Pellets, and me, at first. I had been brought in to join her in a tag match against the Rest of the World.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mother
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:
2. Exodus Quotes

“Dear Jeanette,” [my mother wrote], “there’s nothing wrong, you’re just a bit deaf. Why didn’t you tell me? I’m going home to get your pyjamas.” What was she doing? Why was she leaving me here? I started to cry. My mother looked horrified and rooting around in her handbag she gave me an orange. I peeled it to comfort myself, and seeing me a little calmer, everyone glanced at one another and went away.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mother (speaker)
Related Symbols: Oranges
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:

My mother came to see me quite a lot in the end, but it was the busy season at church. They were planning the Christmas campaign. When she couldn’t come herself she sent my father, usually with a letter and a couple of oranges. “The only fruit,” she always said. I filled my little bucket with peel and the nurses emptied it with an ill grace. I hid the peel under my pillow and the nurses scolded and sighed.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mother
Related Symbols: Oranges
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

“Jeanette, we think you may be having problems at school. Do you want to tell us about them?”

“I’m all right.” I shuffled defensively.

“You do seem rather pre-occupied, shall we say, with God. Your sampler, for instance, had a very disturbing motif. And why did you choose to write about hoopoos and rock badgers in your animal book, and in one case, I believe, shrimps?”

“My mother taught me to read,” I told them.

“Your reading skills are quite unusual, but you haven’t answered my question.”

How could I?

My mother had taught me to read from the Book of Deuteronomy because it is full of animals (mostly unclean). Whenever we read “Thou shall not eat any beast that does not chew the cut or part of the hoof” she drew all the creatures mentioned. Horses, bunnies, and little ducks were vague fabulous things, but I knew all about pelicans, rock badgers, sloths and bats. This tendency towards the exotic has brought me many problems.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mrs. Vole
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

When the children of Israel left Egypt, they were guided by the pillar of cloud by day and he pillar of fire by night. For them this did not seem to be a problem. For me, it was an enormous problem, perplexing and impossible. I didn’t understand the ground rules. The daily world was a world of Strange Notions. I comforted myself as best I could by always rearranging their version of the facts. One day, I learned that Tetrahedron is a mathematical shape. But Tetrahedron is an emperor… The emperor Tetrahedron lived in a palace made from elastic bands. The emperor was beloved by all. Many brought gifts; [fine] material and stories of love and folly. One day, a woman brought the emperor a revolving circus operated by midgets. The midgets acted all of the tragedies and many of the comedies. They acted them all at once, and it was fortunate that Tetrahedron had so many faces, otherwise he might have died of fatigue. They acted them all at once, and the emperor, walking round his theatre, could see them all at once. Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing: that no emotion is the final one.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker)
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
3. Leviticus Quotes

The conference was booked for a Saturday, and there was always a market on Saturdays, so my mother gave me an orange box and told me to shout at everyone what was happening. I had a bad time. It was raining and I wanted to do a good job. Eventually Mrs. Arkwright took pity on me. She let me put my orange box inside the shelter of her stall, so that I could give out [pamphlets] without getting too wet.

“[Your] mother’s mad,” she kept saying.

She might have been right, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was relieved when two o’ clock came and I could go inside with the rest.

“How many tracts did you give out?” demanded my mother, who was hovering by the door.

“All of them.”

She softened. “Good girl.”

The sermon was on perfection, and it was at that moment that I began to develop my first theological disagreement.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mother (speaker), Mrs. Arkwright (speaker)
Related Symbols: Oranges
Page Number: 61-62
Explanation and Analysis:
4. Numbers Quotes

It was clear that I had stumbled on a terrible conspiracy. There are women in the world. There are men in the world. And there are beasts. What do you do if you marry a beast? Beasts are crafty. They disguise themselves like you and I. Like the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood.” Why had no one told me? Did that mean no one else knew? Did that mean that all over the globe, in all innocence, women were marrying beasts?

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker)
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:

I now know she had rewritten the ending [of] Jane Eyre. It was her favourite non-Bible book, and she read it to me over and over again, when I was very small. I couldn’t read it, but I knew where the pages turned. Later, literate and curious, I had decided to read it for myself. I found out, that dreadful day in a back corner of the library, that Jane doesn’t marry St. John at all, that she goes back to Mr. Rochester. It was like the day I discovered my adoption papers while searching for a pack of playing cards. I have never since played cards, and I have never since read Jane Eyre.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mother
Page Number: 75-76
Explanation and Analysis:

We read the Bible as usual, and then told each other how glad we were that the Lord had brought us together. She stroked my head for a long time, and then we hugged and it felt like drowning. Then I was frightened but couldn’t stop. There was something crawling in my belly. I had an octopus inside me. After that we did everything together, and I stayed with her as often as I could. My mother seemed relieved that I was seeing less of Graham, and for a while made no mention of the amount of time I spend with Melanie.

“Do you think this is Unnatural Passion?” I asked [Melanie] once.

“Doesn’t feel like it. According to Pastor Finch, that’s awful.” She must be right, I thought.

Melanie and I had volunteered to set up the Harvest Festival Banquet, and we worked hard in the church throughout the day. When everyone arrived we stood on the balcony, looking down on them. Our family. It was safe.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Melanie (speaker), Mother, Pastor Finch
Page Number: 92
Explanation and Analysis:
5. Deuteronomy Quotes

Constipation was a great problem after the Second World War. Not enough roughage in the diet, too much refined food. If you always eat out you can never be sure what’s going in, and received information is nobody’s exercise. Rotten and rotting. Here is some advice. If you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches…

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker)
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
6. Joshua Quotes

“Renounce her, renounce her,” the pastor kept saying, “it’s only the demon.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t.”

“We’ll come back the day after tomorrow,” he confided in my mother. “Meantime, don’t let her out of this room, and don’t feed her. She needs to lose her strength before it can be hers again.”

My mother locked me in [the parlor.] She did give me a blanket, but she took away the light bulb. Over the thirty-six hours that followed, I thought about the demon. I knew that demons entered wherever there was a weak point. If I had a demon my weak point was Melanie, but she was beautiful and good and had loved me. Can love really belong to the demon?

“They’re looking in the wrong place,” I thought. “If they want to get at my demon they’ll have to get at me. If I let them take away my demons, I’ll have to give up what I’ve found.”

“You can’t do that,” said a voice at my elbow. Leaning on the coffee table was the orange demon.

“What do you want?”

“Everyone has a demon,” the thing began, “but not everyone knows how to make use of it.

“Demons are evil, aren’t they?” I asked, worried.

“Not quite, they’re just difficult.”

“If I keep you, what will happen?”

“You’ll have a difficult time.”

“Is it worth it?”

“That’s up to you.”

The demon vanished.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mother
Related Symbols: The Demon, Oranges
Page Number: 108-109
Explanation and Analysis:

“The Lord forgives and forgets,” the pastor told me. Perhaps the Lord does, but my mother didn’t. While I lay shivering in the parlor she took a toothcomb to my room and found all the letters [from Melanie,] all the cards, all the jottings of my own, and burnt them in the backyard. There are different sorts of treachery, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. She burnt a lot more than the letters that night in the backyard. I don’t think she knew. In her head she was still queen, but not my queen any more.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mother, Melanie
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis:

“Here you are,” said my mother, giving me a sharp dig in the side. “Some fruit. You’re rambling in your sleep again.” It was a bowl of oranges. I took out the largest and tried to peel it. The skin hung stubborn, and soon I lay panting, angry and defeated. What about grapes or bananas? I did finally pull away the outer shell and, cupping both hands round, tore open the fruit.

“Feeling any better?” sitting in the middle [of the orange] was the orange demon.

“I’m going to die.”

“Not you, in fact you’re recovering, apart from a few minor hallucinations, and remember you’ve made your choice now, there’s no going back.”

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mother (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Demon, Oranges
Page Number: 108-109
Explanation and Analysis:
7. Judges Quotes

I was almost asleep when the pastor appeared with my mother hovering in the background. He stood a safe distance away like I was infected. The pastor explained to me as quietly as he could that I was the victim of a great evil. That I was afflicted and oppressed, that I had deceived the flock. My mother gave a little cry, then got angry again. They started arguing between themselves whether I was an unfortunate victim or a wicked person. I listened for a while; neither of them were very convincing, and besides, seven ripe oranges had just dropped on to the window sill.

“Have an orange,” I offered by way of conversation. They both stared at me like I was mad. I lay for a long time just watching the oranges. They were pretty, but not much help. I was going to need more than an icon to get me through this one.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Demon, Oranges
Page Number: 133-134
Explanation and Analysis:

I made my bed carefully the last morning at home, emptied the waste paper basket, and trailed the dog on a long walk. At that time I could not imagine what would become of me, and I didn’t care. It was not judgement day, but another morning.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker)
Page Number: 140
Explanation and Analysis:
8. Ruth Quotes

“Daughter, you have disgraced me,” said the sorcerer, and I have no more use for you. You must leave. Winnet could not ask for forgiveness when she was innocent, but she did ask to stay.

“If you stay, you will stay in the village and care for the goats. I leave you to make up your own mind.” He was gone. Winnet was about to burst into tears when she felt a light pecking at her shoulder. It was Abednego, the raven she loved.

“[If you leave] you won’t lose your power, you’ll [just] use it differently. Sorcerers can’t take their gifts back, ever.”

“And what if I stay?”

“You will find yourself destroyed by grief. All you know will be around you and at the same time far from you. Better to find a new place now.

Winnet sat silent at the edge of the fireplace. The raven, struck dumb, could not warn her that her father had crept in, in the shape of a mouse, and was tying an invisible thread around one of her buttons.

Related Characters: Jeanette, Mother
Related Symbols: The Demon, Winnet
Page Number: 148-149
Explanation and Analysis:

There are threads that help you find your way back, and there are threads that intend to bring you back. Mind turns to the pull, it’s hard to pull away. I’m always thinking of going back. When Lot’s wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt. Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean, but it’s a poor exchange for losing yourself. People do go back, but they don’t survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker)
Related Symbols: Winnet
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:

If demons lie within they travel with you. Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Demon
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:

I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever been anywhere. My mother was treating me like she always had; had she noticed my absence? Did she even remember why I’d left? I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had. There’s a chance that I’m not here at all, that all the parts of me, running along all the choices I did and didn’t make, for a moment brush against each other. That I am still an evangelist in the North, as well as the person who ran away.

Related Characters: Jeanette (speaker), Mother
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis: