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<title> JEANETTE FROM "ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT" </title>
Jeanette is a girl who goes through a big personal change in her early years. In this essay I am going firstly going to describe her as she was before the change and then highlight how she changes from being a very strickt Christian to becoming an independently thinking young woman. I will refer to some events in her life that made this change occur.

Jeanete's mother is a Christian, so she is raised with this belief. She learns to read the Bible, sing church songs, pray, et cetera. The only fairy tales she knows about are those about the lives and actions of saints. All the people she meets are Christians as well, and she wouldn't dream of questioning anything of this, because this is her world, the only one she knows anyting about. Her big task in life is to become a missionary; she is told, and she has nothing against that because she admires missionaries a lot. They are her heros.

Not only is it important for her to live a Christian life, but also to be able to show her knowledge about the Bible to other people. She is very keen to win every church quizz, because that makes her mother happy and her mother is the one who is probably the most important person for Jeanette, most definitely due to the fact that she hasn't got a father.

She is extremely fundamental in her belief. When she goes to school, for example, the other pupils get scared of her when she tells them about purgatory and hell. She doesn't understand why the teacher gets angry with her when she hears about the other children's nightmares. She was only telling them "the truth"!

The event that starts the change in her and which makes her turn away from the conviction that the opinions of the church and her mother are the ultimate truths, arrives when she falls in love with Melanie. This, however, is of course something that totally goes beyond what is seen as right by the conservative church, but fortunately she can, for a long time, hide her feelings from her mother behind friendship. When she finally tells her how it really is and the relationship with Melanie has to end, things are changed between them forever. They hardly talk to each other for a long time. In fear and in need for love Jeanette makes love to Ms. Jewsbury. She feels that Ms. Jewsbury gives her comfort in a world that has turned itself against her. She hasn't changed emotionally but has been left alone by Melanie who doesn't seem to neither want nor dare to start their relationship again. Jeanette is very affraid of what could hapen if she reveals her feelings again, but at the same time this is what she feels and she can't ignore the fact that she stil is attracted by girls.

She is forced to repent by her mother and the pastor and although she isn't totally convinced in her own mind she is very scared of getting "involved" again after the affair with Melanie. She tries hard not to think about it and to go back to her former life again, but she is defeated by her feelings when she meets Katey. She "sins" many times without really regretting it. She knows tht it is wrong, but she has started to doubt her former beliefs so much by now that she feels she wants to decide for herself what to do.

The more she thinks about her former belief and what the church stands for, the more critical she becomes. She disagrees with the points of view of the church as she finds them more and more conservative and introspective. She also finds out things that she didn't know before, for example that her mother is against female influence in the church. She is chocked and starts distrusting her mother more and more. Instead, she believes more and more in herself and her right to be the one she wants to be instead of being shaped after her mother's expectations.

The final breaking point with the church comes when she is forced to stop preaching. She now totally gives up the idea of becoming a missionary. She also leaves her home when her mother doesn't want to accept her leaving the church. She feels she finally has had enough of old-fashioned thinking. Priests, she thinks, only read what is written. They only follow the old disciplines and that doesn't give anyone any freedom. Although she feels comfused to begin with, she knows that this is what she wants to do. She wants to be free to make her own judgements about the world.

To conclude, Jeanette gets to know another side of life through experience. If she hadn't fallen in love with Melanie, her life might never had changed. She might had become a missionary and wouldn't have known anything else. Due to the relationship she learns that the world doesn't necessarily look the way the pastor and her mother describe it. She realises that it is all up to her to live the life she wants to live.
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