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<title> Jeanette - a Dynamic, Round Main Character </title>
Jeanette is, apart from her mother, the most elaborated personality and the one that I will focus on in this essay. She is the protagonist and also the narrator in "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit". The story is told in the first person from her perspective. The reader gets to know Jeanette through her doings, speech, personal thoughts and other people's opinions and comments. Her character evolves and undergoes change throughout the book. 	
In the beginning of the story Jeanette is content with her life, which is permeated with religion. Her family is a matriarchy ruled by her dominant mother, who has planned Jeanette's future for her; She is to dedicate her life to battle the heathens as a missionary. Jeanette has no objections to her fate and tries to please her mother and live up to her expectations. She has worked out exactly when to put the kettle on, in order for the tea to be ready when her mother has finished praying (p.4):
"As soon as "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord" boomed through 
	the wall into the kitchen, I put the kettle on. The time it took to 
	boil the water and brew the tea was just about the length of her 
	final item, the sick list. She was very regular".
The example above also shows that Jeanette is good at observing, which she devotes a great deal of time to. She studies people in her surroundings: men, women and married couples. The same dream returns to her over and over again (p. 69). In the dream she's about to kiss her husband at her wedding, when she discovers that he is blind/a pig/her mother/the man from the post office/just a suit of clothes with nothing inside. I think this dream symbolizes her pondering over the use (if any) of men in society and how to avoid marrying a beast. 
	The young Jeanette is both childishly naïve and precocious at the same time. The childishness can be exemplified by (p. 7) her believing that the paper shop women put chemicals in their sweets, after she overheard her mother saying "they dealt in unnatural passions". The signs of precocity become more evident when she is forced to go to school and interact with non-evangelist children of the same age for the first time. At school all her work and projects are characterized by religious themes and biblical motifs, which are always very imaginative and detailed. She becomes frustrated when her work isn't acknowledged, but considered odd and inappropriate by the teachers and her fellow classmates. She gets on much better with a woman from church known as Testifying Elsie, who is her best friend. Apart from her lovers, Jeanette has no female friends of the same age.
	I think Jeanette sometimes winks at reality due to an instinct of self-preservation. She doesn't want to be reminded of her mother's deceit. There are three examples. The first is when Jeanette looks for a deck of cards in a drawer and finds her adoption papers. She never plays cards after that. The second time was after she had learned to read and decides to rediscover Jane Eyre, her favourite non-Bible book read to her by her mother. She realizes that the ending is not as happy as her mother had made pretence of and never reads the novel again (p. 74). The third time was when her birth mother came to visit and Jeanette listens through the wall and cries for hours (p. 98). After her biological mother has been driven away Jeanette and her mother pretend like nothing has happened and never discuss the subject. Their mother-daughter relationship is not of the warm, close kind. The only time they have a heart-to-heart is when her mother warns her of making the same mistake as she did, mistaking an ulcer for love (p. 84). 
	In her early teens Jeanette has her first theological disagreement. The church remains being an important part of her life, although her love is split equally between God and her first love Melanie. Once Jeanette asks Melanie if she thinks they're engaging in "unnatural passion". Melanie replies: "Doesn't feel like it. According to Pastor Finch, that's awful". Jeanette agrees with her (p. 86). A conflict unfolds when the true nature of the girls' relationship is realised. Jeanette believes that "to the pure all things are pure" (p. 103), but nevertheless repents. She continues to secretly prefer women to men, and as time goes by Jeanette becomes more involved in the church, starts preaching and taking care of Sunday school. When her second love affair with Katy is revealed, the scandal is a fact. Jeanette can't understand how her sexual preference is thought to inhibit her devotion to God. In disbelief she leaves the church and is thrown out from her home by her mother. She comes to absolute clarity after her mother betrays her ideals and declares that certain positions in the church hierarchy belong to the men only, and by preaching, Jeanette had defied God's will and "taken on a man's world" in more than one sense. Jeanette thinks "if there's such a thing as a spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore". (Especially the older Jeanette is very sharp-witted and perspicacious.)
	Jeanette's personality and beliefs are altered from beginning to end. She goes from being an eager-to-please deeply religious child who doesn't question the church to a young woman who has the courage to break with the institution, which has been a large part of her life for very long and who sees through the holiness. One of Jeanette's strongest characteristics is her struggle to be accepted, she wants the school, her mother and the church community to accept her as she is. When none of them is willing to do that she goes her own way. Throughout the book she remains observant with an eye for detail, imaginative and sharp-witted, offering sharp comments.
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