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<title> Jeanette </title>
My purpose of this essay is to give a description of the principal character, Jeanette, in Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. This novel was first published in Great Britain in 1985. Jeanette Winterson was born in England in 1959 and was raised by a family of Pentecostal evangelists, destined as it seemed to be a missionary. Instead, she left home for several odd jobs before studying English at Oxford. Except for going to Oxford, Jeanette in Winterson's novel, also had the same background, so this novel might be, at least to some extent, an autobiography.

The chapters of the novel bear the names of the books of the Old Testament in the Bible, namely Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy as well as Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, indicating the stages Jeanette of the novel is passing, from early childhood and through her experiences when growing up in her Pentecostal Evangelist family in Lancashire in northern England. The novel also gives a vivid picture of the very special social setting of this part of England in the first half of the 20th century. The atmosphere seems restricted to these zealous followers of the Lord wrestling furiously to missionize their beliefs into the rest of the world, full of depraved, poor and sinful heathens.

As early as on the first page Winterson very effectively introduces the reader about the climate little Jeanette was brought up in, with her mother, taken her as an orphan, being a very dominating woman. "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 Brontė, Slug pellets, and me at first. I had been brought in to join her in a tag match against the Rest of the World."

Jeanette's father on the contrary was a quiet character who wasn't very pushing. Except for a couple of devoted pastors, men are described as almost irrelevant people in the main story. However, at intervals some men come into play in the metaphors interleft in the book.

Already in her pre-school years Jeanette showed a somewhat ironic and critical wit. On page 13 in the book, she comments upon the horrible Pastor Finch with his squeaky voice and strange teeth: "When I came back into the hall somebody asked me if I'd seen Pastor Finch. 'He is in the Sunday School Room playing with the Fuzzy Felt,' I replied. 'Don't be fanciful Jeanette,' said the voice. I looked up. It was Miss Jewsbury;"

In the following pages of Genesis Jeanette reflects upon the poorest people living at the Factory Bottoms, when she and her mother pass that place on their way home, though she makes her observations through the glasses of her mother: "I wasn't allowed in the Factory Bottoms on my own, and that night as the rain began, I was sure I knew why. If the demons lived anywhere it was here." Next Door was the work of the Devil as her mother put it.
"I discovered that everything in the natural world was a symbol of the Great Struggle between good and evil. 'Consider the mamba,' said my mother. 'Over short distances the mamba can outrun a horse.' And she drew a race on a sheet of paper. She meant that in the short term, evil can triumph, but never for very long. We were very glad, and we sang our favourite hymn, Yield Not to Temptation.

At the age of seven Jeanette asked herself why she didn't go to school and she was curious because her mother used to call it a Breeding Ground for Unnatural Passions. So far Jeanette's lessons were restricted to Horticulture catalogues and the Book of Revelation offered by her mother, but it wasn't long before Jeanette had to go to school anyway, and this is how Exodus started. The essence of this chapter I think is the growing bewilderment that Jeanette experienced. She was so to say "squeezed" between conflicting messages given by school, her mother and why not by Elsie's philosophical comments on Yeats (page 30). Jeanette had to consider 'What looks like one thing, may well be another.''It's all in the mind.' 'God is in everything, so it's always the same thing.' Jeanette had the "feeling that her mother would disagree, but she wasn't there, so it didn't matter." Jeanette didn't find many explanations at school either. Things only got more and more complex. She felt she didn't learnt anything. In the sewing class she was pestered by her teacher when she wanted to sew religious motives and when her class mates mobbed and hit her, she was the one that was victimized by the school principal. School was only confusion and Jeanette became very depressed and lonely. Tired of being bullied, Jeanette tried everything to get accepted. She tried to be kind and well-behaved, but of no use. She attempted to win prizes, but never succeeded.

In Leviticus the Heathens of Next Door were fornicating and consequently Jeanette's mother went berserk, which puzzled Jeanette all the more.

In Numbers Jeanette had dreams of what it was about being married. She had to ponder about that and about other women's experiences of men, and of their being "pigs". Most women got married, but why did they marry beasts? She asked her mother why she married her dad, but mother somehow twisted herself out of the matter. 

One day Jeanette walked with her mother among the fish stalls in town. Then she all of a sudden caught sight of a young girl who was boning kippers on a marble slab. Jeanette noticed Melanie's lovely grey eyes. Very nervous she met Melanie outside Woolworth's (page 83) and they had baked potatoes together. Melanie revealed that she had no father and Jeanette explained that she was dedicated to the Lord and the two girls got to know each other more and more. Each Monday they read the Bible together and Jeanette was delighted having an intimate friend at last. Once Jeanette stayed over night with Melanie. They tenderly hugged each other and it felt like drowning. Jeanette was frightened at the same time. "Do you think this is Unnatural Passion?", she asked her mother, who answered in a tricky way: "Doesn't feel like it. According to Pastor Finch, that's awful." Unconsciously, I think, mother expressed her own horror of seeing her own daughter fall a victim to the beasts. Realizing at the same time the sin of homosexuality, she dealt with it by referring to Pastor Finch's opinion (page 89).

In Deuteronomy, the last book of the Law, Jeanette is trying to conclude her position in the world. She attempts to analyze the difference between stories and history. Her synthesis is radical. "If you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches...." (pages 93-95)
History is like a string full of knots arranged in a very complicated way and it becomes even more complex, as it is very often a means of denying the past. "Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity. To fit it, force it, function it, to suck out the spirit until it looks the way you think it should. We are all historians in our small way. And in some ghastly way Pol Pot was more honest than the rest of us have been. Pol Pot decided to dispense with the past altogether, to dispense with the sham of treating the past with objective respect. In Cambodia the cities were to be wiped out, maps thrown away, everything gone. No documents. Nothing. A brave new world. The old world was horrified. We pointed the finger, but big fleas have little fleas on their back to bite them." These lines and the following I think are key sentences in the novel. Jeanette is now ready to break with her past hell. She continues, "The dead don't shout. There is a certain seductiveness about what is dead. It will retain all those admirable qualities of life with none of that tiresome messiness associated with live things. Crap and complaints and the need for affection." God knows the unassailable truth, but Jeanette is now able to put fragments together in the way she wants. She makes sandwiches laced with mustard of her own.
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