‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ tells the semi autobiographical story of an English girl whose lesbian affair wreaks havoc in her family's conservative evangelical community. ‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ is a comic-satiric novel which combines a passionately angry, yet warm representation of a close-knit, mutually suspicious Lancashire community, a Bildungsroman of the adolescent heroine's struggle to establish her own identity in the world of distorted certainties inhabited by her mother, and the bitter-sweet story of her love for and betrayal by her lover Melanie and her mother. On one level this is a classic narrative of the struggle between the mother and the daughter, an Oedipal drama in which the father merely spectates from the sidelines:
"My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that... she had never heard of mixed feelings".
Commenting on the fact that the novel is a tale of a mother with passionate convictions and a daughter who wrestles with her.
The mother and the church are Jeanette's antagonists. Her mother, joined by Pastor Spratt and Mrs. White, tries to force Jeanette to repress her homosexual desire. As they become more forceful, the split solidifies. The climax occurs when Jeanette returns from her week with Katy. Her love affair has been exposed, and the church makes its final attempt to "cure" her. They fail and Jeanette runs away.
Celie's antagonists are all the hardships that she must overcome in order to gain self-esteem. First she must overcome the interracial conflict, specifically sexist oppression, within her family. Celie is victimized first by her father, who rapes and impregnates her, and then by her husband, to whom her father virtually sells her. Her husband, Albert, beats her and forces her to have sex with him. Both men impress upon her that she is a lowly human being. Their abuse is supported by the entire community. In addition to physical, sexual, and verbal abuse, she is denied contact with other women, specifically with her sister who writes her letters that Celie never receives.
The narratives in both novels help to portray the extent to which the women in the novels struggle and how they develop throughout the novels to overcome this struggle. The narrative shows the growth and development of the characters towards true independence and freedom.
‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ has an introduction that tells you how it came to be written, how to read it, and its publishing history, it is part of the novel, in a way. The body of the novel has eight sections, whose titles correspond to the first eight books of the Old Testament. But what is inside each section is either completely different from the Bible, or an implicit parody of it. The real book of Genesis begins with the creation of Adam and Eve in Paradise; this version begins with the heroine being taken from an orphanage into a strange kind of exile, with the story of how this is achieved being much like the birth story of Jesus. The heroine begins as a fundamentalist preacher of the Bible, but then things go wrong–the true Bible turns out to be false, and the false Bible (the novel ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ is the truth, for the author at least, though not for her mother, or many others. The narrative is broken up into short sections, and it is not always clear why one follows another–a deliberately anti-linear narrative. A linear narrative argues that the world is a fundamentally orderly place, in which the sequence of time corresponds to a sequence of cause and effect. A traditional story therefore reinforces order and continuity, at every level from personal history (organic development of the self) to society (myth of progress) to human destiny (Christian of Creation, Fall, Redemption, Judgement). ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ does have a standard narrative of the novel of development, which peeps out from time to time and gives us a broad sense of where the heroine is going.
In ‘The Color Purple’, we are not quite sure where the heroine is going, but know that Celie is growing and learning about herself. God is the only thing she could turn to after her stepfather’s poignant warning
"You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy."
This opening is a triple negative, an indication of the story to come. It is a punishment intending to restrict and isolate her from any channels of communication. There is to be no relief for her from her suffering. The first letters go to God but later they are motivated by her love for Nettie. The letters chart her development from a confused, innocent and frightened 14-year-old schoolgirl into a confident, spiritually whole woman.
"You Black, you pore, you ugly Goddamit you nothing at all."
Mister's description of Celie is the way in which she is seen by her husband and also by the society around her. This is also her starting point - the moment when she determines to assert herself.
This development had two key initiators, Shug and Sophia, strong female influences. She learns a lot from Sofia and Harpo's relationship; like the fact that a wife doesn't have to take abuse from her husband.
"You ought to bash Mr._________ head open, she say. Think bout heaven later."
This is one of the first instances in which Celie starts to care about her life and makes gradual attempts to better it.
Shug Avery enters the novel next and is idealized by Celie. Celie begins to learn from her and becomes her own person. All the sexual experiences she had had prior to the one with Shug were terrible, and usually against her will. But after her experience with Shug she realizes that sexual contact can be enjoyed, she becomes comfortable with her body, and learns that touching herself is not a bad thing.
" I don't know nothing bout it, I say to Shug. I don’t know much she say."
As Shug and Celie’s relationship progressed, she began to experience a real relationship with someone she cared about. Lesbianism is also a very prominent theme in ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’.
At the beginning of "Leviticus" "strange noises, like cries for help, come from “Next Door". Sex and religion are opposites, but also related–they both involve strange and noisy rituals, attempts to get in touch with something higher. Jeannette’s Mother sees it as sacrilegious; Jeanette is curious and eventually chooses sex over religion. The particular sin in ‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ is lesbianism: being sexually different, or perverse from the Church’s point of view. Winterson gives an analytic judgement on this in the introduction: the novel
"illustrates by example that what the Church calls love is actually psychosis and it dares to suggest that what makes life difficult for homosexuals is not their perversity but other people’s."
Celie only feels truly sexually loved after her discovery of lesbian pleasures, marking another step towards the end of her struggle, even more independence from her oppressors, men. Celie gains more self-confidence from being with Shug and with this she confronts Albert,
"You a lowdown dog is what you is what's wrong, I say. Its time to leave you and enter into the Creation. And your dead body is just the welcome mat I need."
The hackneyed image that women were inferior was basically just a myth. The black women in the book ‘The Color Purple’ did all the work. Celie would get up to cook, clean, go out and work in the fields all day, then come back and cook and clean some more. Sophia would work in the fields, repair the roof, and take care of the children. The men, Mr. and Harpo, would sit and not do much. Then if the women ever said anything they would beat them. It was not until Shug Avery came along did Celie realize not to take men seriously. Ms. Avery and Celie did become lesbians, but Shug taught Celie that people have to stand up for themselves, if they want respect. As Celie and Shug fell in love, Celie grew as a person. She started to stand up to Mr. Celie also started to wear pants. In doing so, she was showing her independence. In those days, men were only supposed to be clothed in pants. Celie was showing, in a small way, that a woman can do anything a man can. Through help from Shug, Celie started a successful business making pants for all the relatives. This is another way Shug helped Celie gain her independence. Women were supposed to rely on men for everything (i.e. food, clothing, shelter, etc.). With Celie making her own money she did not need a man. Celie and her sister Nettie also owned a house, which was left to them by their stepfather. Celie is further independent from men. Celie found a way out by acquiring a plan. This plan was patterned after an already independent woman, Shug. Shug got out by singing, Nettie by being a missionary, and Celie by making pants. Any minority that is being oppressed can learn from The Color Purple. A minority can pattern his/her assent to greatness after someone who came from similar backgrounds. All minorities can take this advice to heart. Stand up for what is believed. Make a difference.
Both novels use symbolism but in totally different ways. In ‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ the way in which the novel is written in a sometimes confusing but always highly imaginative style expresses the confusion, innocence and newness of what is happening. In ‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ different styles are mixed up together, some sections use narrative and description to tell you what went on in the heroine’s home life, what people eat and drink, what their possessions are, etc. Whereas some passages are didactic–the author tells you directly what she thinks about life–for example, the whole of Deuteronomy is an essay on history, where it seems to be Jeanette Winterson talking to us directly, rather than the heroine of the novel. Then there are the fairy-tales and re-telling of the story of King Arthur & his nights. Novels were supposed to have left that behind, but here it is again. The styles are not unified so as to give the impression of a consistent personality at work, with a single vision of the world. For example, the book is saturated with religion, but also makes fun of it; sometimes its a kind of politically correct pamphlet on lesbianism, but at other times sex is a joke; it is a feminist novel with a monstrous woman at its centre and an amiable, absent father.
This inconsistent style is explained in the crucial point that Winterson makes at the end of "Exodus" (p. 48): "that no emotion is the final one."
In ‘The Color Purple’ symbolism is used to show solidarity. Alice Walker traces the line stretching from southern black women's past to present to future in her novel ‘The Color Purple’ by depicting today's women and the people from whom they descend. Through these images she reinforces her belief that only by acknowledging the past can women experience meaningful change in their lives.
"Many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother's stories." -- Alice Walker (Walker, Everyday Use 47)
Walker makes use of the quilt to represent black women's heritage in ‘The Color Purple’. The quilt symbolizes the importance of unity among black women, long oppressed by their men. This unity is a legacy for black women of today and the future. Women were believed to be weak and incompetent in comparison with men. In ‘The Color Purple’, Harpo marries an independent Black woman. Sophia is bigger than Harpo and does not really do what he says. When Harpo beats Sophia to "make her mind," she beats him. The idea that a man has to beat a woman follows right along with the stereotype that women are inferior.
One day Sofia confronts Celie, asking her why Celie has advised Harpo to beat Sofia to make her obey. Celie admits she endures the same treatment from Mr. _______. She told Harpo to beat Sofia because she is jealous of Sofia, Celie says, because Sofia fights back where Celie can't. Sofia forgives Celie. They solidify their friendship when they decide to start a quilt from the "messed up curtains" Celie made for Sofia when she got married.
Later in the book, the quilt appears again as a symbol of the sisterhood of these women and the strength they derive from that sisterhood. Mr. _______ and his brother, Tobias, are on the porch with Celie and Sofia, who are working on a quilt. Shug Avery enters to hear the two men belittling all the women they know.
"All womens not alike, Tobias, she say. Believe it or not."
Shug sits down, and for the first time, joins the other women in their quilting. Her action places her firmly united with Sofia and Celie. Later, pieces of Shug's old yellow dress are added to the quilt, the pattern of which is Sister's Choice. There's little doubt this quilt will be passed on to daughters and granddaughters.
‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ can be seen as a lesbian novel. Lesbianism is a metaphor for difference, for issues of conformity and self-assertion. Jeannette comes to it "by accident"–a discovery of her own nature, and of pleasure. Not a choice or an act of will, so it cannot be a sin. The last three sections of the book–Joshua, Judges, Ruth–present a complex struggle of self-definition and escape. Joshua made the walls of Jericho fall down by blowing his trumpet. Jeanette needs to break down the walls of her home, and to create the magic circle that will protect her soul from the world. She also needs the pebble–something left over from the wall, a magic token, but also a weapon, like the stone David used to kill Goliath. The death of Elsie breaks Jeanette’s ties with her town. And so, she makes the journey to the beautiful city, that is, Oxford, marking Jeannette’s decision to live away from home, and to be prophet rather than priest. Ending returns to irony, the mother’s reality, like Melanie’s, has been left untouched by their encounter with Jeanette.
Characters in both novels face and overcome struggle. Celie is reunited with her beloved sister and children and is totally independent from men, romantically and financially. Jeannette escapes the oppression of her fundamentalist religious community; she discovers herself and is liberated, no longer reliant or betrothed to the church. Struggle can come in many forms, even as a challenge. It doesn’t necessarily have to be negative. Although the situations that both Celie and Jeannette were faced with were oppressive, both protagonists sought it as a challenge that they overcame and were liberated by.
