The “Color Purple” and “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit” are both disturbing and uncomfortable novels, compare these two novels
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The Color Purple and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit are both disturbing and uncomfortable novels. Compare these two novels in light of this observation.
Pay close attention to the methods used.
Both The Color Purple and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit are written in the first person, "I am fourteen years old", "I lived for a long time with my mother and father". This means that the reader is engaged with the central characters in both novels from the start. Celie and Jeanette come from very different countries, cultures and races, but have fundamental similarities that both authors use to create feelings that are uncomfortable and disturbing within the reader. However, both authors also succeed in transforming that which we perceive as uncomfortable into something we view as empowering and liberating by the end of the novels.
Thematically both novels deal with similar ideas, religion, spirituality, identity, sexuality and making the most of your birthright, but reducing the novels to such a list of ideas fails to communicate the intricate patterning of the themes throughout the lives and experiences of the novel's central characters. Both authors use first person narrators as the primary means of engaging the reader with the text and both authors interweave thematic content into the experiences of their central narrators in a realistic and naturalistic way. From the first moment we meet' Celie we see her innocent attempts to cope with and deal with the abuse she is suffering. The first line of the novel reveals the power Celie's abuser knows that he has and the relationship she has with God - established as a personal dialogue from the beginning - which will be important throughout the novel.
You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy. (page 3)
The secret Alfonso tells Celie to keep is 'out' by the second page of the novel - Celie's pregnancy: her mother's death and the murder of her first child have all happened by page 4. This is truly a horrible, disturbing opening to a novel - but Celie's narrative is so innocent, naïve and matter of fact that we accept the horror as Celie's normality and in fact have read the opening letters without really absorbing what they say or mean. Winterson also captures the essential difference of her central character in the opening paragraph of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by emphasising the 'normality' of Jeanette's life.
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 was in the white corner and that was that. (Page 3).
Jeanette's father conforms to a white, male, northern working class stereotype distilled into the image of the man watching the wrestling. Jeanette's mother, on the other hand, is seen as confrontational and fighting from the very beginning, and the reader is prepared for the ensuing 'ten rounds' between mother and daughter. Perhaps the key difference in the approach of the two authors is that the reader is completely immersed in Celie's present without any indication that the horror that is her life will alter, whilst Winterson's narrator is retrospective and the past tense "I lived" tells us from the start that things have altered for her.
Modern critics use a variety of different metaphors and ideas to interpret both these novels. Such interpretations serve to 'normalise' the experiences we read - to turn something that is alien to the majority of modern readers into something they can directly relate to. Regarding The Color Purple as a quilt would be such an interpretation. This metaphor used to explain the narrative structure of the novel presents the reader with an assortment of characters of different creed, class and gender from the perspectives of either Celie or Nettie. At the end of the novel all these different ...
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Modern critics use a variety of different metaphors and ideas to interpret both these novels. Such interpretations serve to 'normalise' the experiences we read - to turn something that is alien to the majority of modern readers into something they can directly relate to. Regarding The Color Purple as a quilt would be such an interpretation. This metaphor used to explain the narrative structure of the novel presents the reader with an assortment of characters of different creed, class and gender from the perspectives of either Celie or Nettie. At the end of the novel all these different observations, comments and characters tie together. The quilt as a metaphor links to the American custom of preparing a quilt for a girl's wedding, therefore the future can be seen to be built on a collection of memories and relationships. Only when woven together through the development of the book can the ideas of struggle and survival be fully understood. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit would need a metaphor that is quintessentially English. A maze, for example, could be used to describe the narrative structure of the novel. Jeanette spirals between the realist and fantasist and Winterson herself describes the narrative of the novel as resembling mental processes which "... areAre closer to a maze than a motorway, every turning yields another turning, not symmetrical, not obvious." It is therefore not surprising that the narrator can move between considering her mother and her mother's approach to faith on page 9 "she walked out one night and thought of her life and thought of what was possible" to considering a fairytale, "Once upon a time there was a brilliant and beautiful princess, so sensitive that the death of a moth could distress her for weeks on end." The allegory of the princess reflects on her mother's religious decisions but also lends depth and a timeless quality to Jeanette's understanding and perception of her mother. Jeanette's 'genesis' comes from the combined forces of religious fervour and fairytale fantasy - a far cry from the normal, mundane image of her father watching the wrestling. The combination of the two is unsettling.
The Color Purple is written in epistolary form - as a series of letters. This is an unsettling narrative form to use because it gives such a narrow and biased perspective. The reader sees Celie unable to explore her feelings through the letters because of the restrictions of her education. Ironically, these, these restrictions create more pathos towards the protagonist because of the limits that are externally inflicted on her by society; the uneducated dialect however promotes a much higher maturity in its interpretation. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is a 'free associational' narrative. By this I think Winterson means that the novels ideas are thrown at you randomly as Jeanette grows up, and it is only in the ultimate chapter that the epicentre of Jeanette's life is nakedly exposed as an ordinary "normal" life, "LIKE MOST PEOPLE". The semi- autobiographical tone creates an illusion of 'knowing' and 'being' and makes the reader view Jeanette as a tangible being, a reflection of you or me.
Winterson suggests with the use of listing that Jeanette is a tool to explore her own ideas of religion.
"A missionary child"
a servant of God
a blessing"
Jeanette is the fulfilment of a prophecy, she is her mothers tangible token of the saviour, "I cannot recall a time when I did not know that I was special." However, this ambition of the mothers dose seem melodramatic and comical to the reader. Religion is exposed through the novel as potentially corrupting. The dogmatic and melodramatic nature of the mother creates a humour that reiterates the idea that religion is not to be taken at face value. Deeper streams of thought lie beneath the ceremony and rituals. As in life, deeper thought lies beneath the faces of individuals. When cross-referenced however with 'The Color Purple', religion is exposed as pathetic. Celie's letters and devotion to her "God" like listener leaves her ever more vulnerable. However, because she is not influenced by our morality the child sees no wrong in what is happening to her. Certain influential characters have always moulded individual existence. This is evident in both novels. Having suffered the torment of repeated rape, and having to leave go of her children, she is both emotionally and sexually sterile, "I don't bleed no more". Celie's character is hit again when having to let go of Nettie. However, this creates an important and core independence through her meeting new and influential people, who expand her horizons. Jeanette is moulded into a confident and influential character. Throughout the foundling's life, her mother has actively sought confrontation, from the "wind" "Mormons" or the "labour party"; this creates a backdrop of humour as we instantly see Jeanette's mother as a pedantic lady. The character reduces everything in the world to either "good" or "evil" therefore acting blind to any complexes:
Enemies were: The devil
Next door
Sex
Slugs
Friends were: God
Our dog
Auntie Madge
The novels of Charlotte Bronte
Slug Pellets
The humour distracts us from the deep mindset of Jeanette's mother. Her justification of prejudice through invented thought is heavily jocular, "The devil himself is a drunk (sometimes my mother invented theology)." Winterson uses an ironic simile to expose the pathetic nature of community, and its invasive pressures, "just like Jesus on the pinnacle except it's not very tempting." The tone deals with religion in a farcical manner.
Ideas of narrow mindedness and single focus are dismissed in both novels. Perversions of the human condition are explored as an overriding theme in both novels. This idea is developed by the wide metaphor of 'identity'. The development of Identity is paralleled in the development of nature. Nature is presented in two fashions throughout the novel. The innocent and experienced flip. An obvious reference to nature is when the hard battered and unfeeling Celie tells herself "you're a tree"; this presents Celie as emotionally deadened, stoical, helpless and passive. Clothing is used a device in "The Color Purple" to discuss identity. The clothes characters wear tend to foreshadow the role they are about to take on. Celie's choice of "blue dress" represents her life as a slave for Mr______. Later Nettie is forced to wear Corrine's old clothes; this is portentous of her marriage to Samuel. When she pays a visit to the clothes shop she has a choice of "brown, maroon or navy blue." While this colour imagery implies uniformity and a life of work and not pleasure, it also signifies a new identity.
Winterson suggests that relationships become dysfunctional without the freedom of thought and choice. Jeanette's mother refused to accept or understand her daughter's sexuality, forcing her to leave home, "I am moving out on Thursday" reported speech highlights the deterioration of the relationship between mother and daughter. Winterson, who in turn provokes the reader into feeling compassion, substantiates the idea that relationships need compromise to be functional. Jeanette and her mother's relationship is purely based around religion, whereas Celie's and Mr_____ is based initially on convenience.
Her freedom of spirit and identity birth is illustrated when she finally leaves Mr_____ to "enter into her creation," a natural paradise with Shug Avery and a "fountain out front" suggesting a new life as a liberated woman. The fountain acts as a metaphor and inspires Celie. She found a new voice and asserted her identity, and by doing so she begins to free others people by making and tailoring pants to suit the wearer rather than the manufacturer's purse. Her company "Folkspants Unlimited" stands as a symbol that all women may be free, wherever they are in the world.
The letters enable us to be an ulterior being. We are reading Celie's life it is between our fingers. Celie id told to "not never tell nobody but God"; we therefore are put in the position of "God." Yet, by writing her thoughts in her unique infant style, the reader actually hears her voice, so that we are hearing it even if no one else will. Letters therefore signify not just communication, but as protestation and defiance against one's oppressors they are used as weapons. An important juncture in Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple' is reached when Celie first recovers the missing letters from her long-lost sister Nettie. This discovery not only signals the introduction of a new narrator to this epistolary novel but also begins the transformation of Celie from writer to reader. Indeed, the passage in which Celie struggles to puzzle out the markings on her first envelope from Nettie provides a concrete illustration of both Celie's particular horizon of interpretation and Walker's chosen
approach to the epistolary form:
"Saturday morning Shug put Nettie letter in my lap. Little fat queen of England stamps on it, plus stamps that got peanuts, coconuts, rubber trees and say Africa. I don't know where England at. Don't know where Africa at either. So I stir don't know where Nettie at."
Walker defines "blackness" in terms of "whiteness". She seduces us into identifying ourselves with the black female writer/ participant and not the white male thus in a sense "colouring" us all. Winterson attacks the hypocrisy of religion and argues that religion should be taken out of the church and put back into nature.
On the surface the "Color Purple" has a happy ending in the vein of Cinderella. Celie's metamorphosis into a successful businesswoman, reconciled with her past and her abusers". Celie does not seem at all connected with the girl we have seen grow throughout the novel. In this way can be considered like a fairy story and we can believe in a happy ending. If it is viewed as a fairy story its connection with the real world is diminished, as the gritty reality of Celie's life is transformed. But how can a 'fairy tale' evolve from so much so much grotesque and disturbing content? Is what we consider disturbing and uncomfortable just lingo for what we don't understand, or is Walker doing something even more complex as the Cinderella, rags to riches this transformation serves to emphasise the horrors of Celie's past. In comparison "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" presents Jeanette in a quest for identity as in the vein of "The Ugly Duckling". Both Jeanette and her mother are engaged in a quest to attain a sense of identity beyond the limitations placed on them as relatively poor people in a male dominated class prejudiced society. There differences from mainstream society cause them to be ostracised, but their sense of being "called to be apart" simultaneously enables them to forge an identity for themselves in defiance of the culturally prescribed roles for women. In both the realist and fantasy narratives, Jeanette's quest entails a break from the manipulative control of her mother. This fairy tale plays out the conflict between Jeanette and her mother for control over Jeanette's future and identity.
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