Coming Out and Ways of Coping in Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Anonymous College

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-of-age novel that describes the life of a girl named Janette who is adopted into an evangelical household. Raised by a mother who is blindly devoted to her church, Janette as well feels great connection to the church and its teachings. However, her relation towards the church becomes challenged when she realizes that she likes women romantically. The novel is divided into eight chapters which are named after the first eight books of the Old Testament in the chronological order. The main plot of the novel is also tinged with Janette’s dreams, her own invented fairy tales, and stories she was told as a child, that mostly allude to Janette’s life and help her cope with her coming out and leaving home. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit focuses on the tensions between Janette’s sexual life with her religious one, on her peculiar relationship with her adoptive mother, her development and moral growth, and the novel also tells the story of her upbringing until she leaves her home to go to university. This essay deals with the analysis of Janette Winterson’s novel and its purpose is to show what struggles Janette has to endure just because she goes against the prescribed heterosexual norm. It...