When asked whether she felt Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit could or should be thought of as a lesbian novel, Winterson replied:

No. It's for anyone interested in what happens at the frontiers of common-sense. Do you stay safe or do you follow your heart? I've never understood why straight fiction is supposed to be for everyone, but anything with a gay character or that includes gay experience is only for queers.

She certainly does have a point. The assumption that fiction dealing with gay experience can only speak to gays is part and parcel of society’s heterosexist assumptions and biases. However, in the same way that heterosexual, romance novels deal with an experience of love that has to be foreign to homosexuals, lesbian novels must have elements and incidents with which no heterosexual can fully identify. To cite an example, no heterosexual man or woman can truly understand the experience and the risk of coming out of the closet. (I know it was an aspect of the novel with which I could not fully connect, despite Winterson’s reassurances.) Consequently, the author’s quite justified reservations aside, I believe Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit needs to be seen as fitting into a long tradition of lesbian novels to be studied with any degree of accuracy or to be fully understood. In this essay, therefore, I shall show how it is an example of the lesbian Bildungsroman and I shall also discuss how it demonstrates the use of androgyny as a tactic by writers working in this genre.

Firstly, we need to define what we understand by a lesbian Bildungsroman. In her article on the subject, Zimmerman provides a helpful summary of this genre’s characteristic plot:

Coming out . . . provides “a point of exit from mainstream heterosexist culture.” The lesbian finds herself in uncharted territory, “in empty space.” The lesbian pilgrim progresses through this dangerous territory of heterosexuality, loosening, shedding or finally succumbing to the constraints placed upon her free imagination (her lesbianism) by a hostile society (most often her parents, teachers and employers, although every member of society is the lesbian’s potential enemy). Along her path she is educated socially, sexually and emotionally, often within the environs of an all-female world where the young girl awakens to her true identity, her powers and her sexuality. (245-246)

To this pattern, she adds two, possible endings. The lesbian either ends up in a separatist community of homosexual women, or she returns to the mainstream world but keeps “one foot in lesbian nation” (254-255). By the latter, Zimmerman assumably means that the protagonist might live and move in a heterosexist society, but she does not capitulate her sexuality.

It does not take a stretch of the imagination to see that Winterson’s novel follows much the same trajectory. Jeanette grows up in a society - that of the church - which has certain, limiting codes of behaviour. It is not mainstream by any means, but it is deeply heterosexist and deeply invested in the institution of marriage. Consequently, when Jeanette awakens to her lesbianism, she finds herself in a precarious position as both her mother and her church attempt to force her back into the heterosexist mainstream. They succeeded in compelling7 her first lover, Melanie, to conform and to marry into a life of domestic placidity. Her second lover, Katy, is also prepared to renounce her in exchange for social endorsement. Jeanette, however, rejects their attempts and reaffirms her sexuality, even though it means being rejected by them. Along the way, she is educated socially and sexually by Miss Jewsbury, who cautions her to silence and who makes love to her, and emotionally by Elsie, who teaches her about genuine and selfless love. By the end of the novel, she is secure enough in her lesbian identity to return home to the mainstream community to celebrate Christmas with her mother.

In all lesbian novels, but especially those of Bildung, the mother is a central figure. She is often the object of the protagonist’s quest, as the daughter works through the painful implications of and the rifts caused by her sexual orientation when it comes to her relationship with her mother. The mother can also be the point to which the character returns after her journey of education and exploration. Stimpson remarks on these two roles when she argues that “poignantly, painfully, (the protagonists) seek the mother as well. A mother waits at the heart of the labyrinth of some lesbian texts. There she unites past, present and future.” (376) In the Bildungsroman, therefore, the mother represents the three stages of the protagonist’s journey. She is a symbol of the past with its strictures and impulses towards conformity. She is a symbol of the present with its tensions and also its potential. However, she is also a symbol of hope for the future - hope for reconcilation between mother and daughter, heterosexual and homosexual.

Again, this argument can be easily applied to Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The presence of Jeanette’s mother permeates the book. Her father, on the contrary, seems to have fallen into a textual lacuna for all we learn of him. The first pages of the novel are all about her mother, about her daily rituals, about her likes and dislikes, about her religiousness. Among other things, we learn that she “had never heard of mixed feelings” (3), that she “always prayed in exactly the same way”(4) and that she “sometimes . . . invented theology”(5).

As can be expected from this type of beginning, the changing nature of their relationship serves as the foundation for the novel. In the opening chapters, Jeanette is little more than an extension of her mother. She shares her likes and dislikes, her enemies and her friends, her beliefs and her prejudices. She tells us that she “had been brought in to join her in a tag match against the Rest of the World”(3). Nonetheless, when the government forces her mother to send her to school, a rift begins to develop between them. At first, it manifests itself in a mildly absurd way with her mother becoming enraged because she “had abandoned biblical themes” (47) in her crafts and projects for school. However, her discovery of her homosexuality enlarges the rift between them, when she speaks about them to her mother. Her mother shares her concerns with the church, then, in what Jeanette sees as a greater betrayal, burns all the mementoes of her relationship with Melanie. Jeanette remarks significantly: “She burnt a lot more than the letters that night in the backyard. I don’t think she knew. In her head she was still queen, but not my queen any more, not the White Queen any more” (110). This suggests the break between parent and child, that will ultimately manifest itself in her mother telling her to leave the house because she’s “not havin’ demons here”(134). Nevertheless, the novel ends on a note of reconciliation between the two women, as Jeanette returns home for Christmas and they re-establish something of a relationship. Her mother is even able to treat her lesbianism is a relatively light, jocular manner, grumbling that it is her fault when Mrs White faints and blaming her victory at Beetle on her being a sinner and cheating.

Taking a symbolic view of the mother-daughter relationship, I have already spoken of the mother embodying and reconciling past, present and future. However, the mother figure also seems to embody the heterosexist mainstream that wishes to perpetuate itself through co-opting and converting the daughter. The lesbian protagonist must free herself of it, although the process is often painful and alienating, and discover her sexual identity. Once secure in that, she is able to return to the mainstream community of heterosexuals, even as an outsider, and there can be a degree of reconciliation between it and herself. As is evident from this, the cycle of the daughter’s relationship with her mother parallels precisely her lesbian Bildung.

In addition to the figure of mother, women in general have a critical role to play in the lesbian novel of development. In the extract quoted, Zimmerman speaks about the lesbian protagonist being educated in an all-female environment. To all intents and purposes, this is true for Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The father is an absent figure, while Jeanette rejects the pastor’s teachings about sexuality during the sermon where her relationship with Melanie is exposed:

‘I will read you the words of St Paul,’ announced the pastor, and he did, and many more words besides about unnatural passions and the mark of the demon.

‘To the pure all things are pure,’ I yelled at him. ‘It’s you not us.’ (103)

The other men in the novel are dismissed lightly and finally as “beasts” (71), when she becomes disillusioned with the romantic notions of love and marriage and realises that “all over the globe, in all innocence, women were marrying beasts”(71).

On the contrary, the female characters are shown as imparting important lessons about her own identity as a lesbian to Jeanette. It begins with the gay couple who run Grimby’s, and who offer to take her to the seaside with them. Unsurprisingly, her mother refuses, but it is the first time Jeanette learns about what her mother delicately calls “unnatural passions”(7), even though she suspects it refers to “chemicals in their sweets”(7) at the time. Later, when Jeanette is in hospital with adenoids and is constructing an igloo out of orange peels, Elsie takes the opportunity to teach her about the importance and the pleasure of building and rebuilding. Winterson slyly links this to Jeanette’s need to rebuild her life and reconstruct her identity after her mother and the church’s assault on it when she has Elsie quote a poem that reads ‘All things fall and are built again \ And those who build them again are gay.’ (30). Obviously, the poet is using ‘gay’ in its slightly archaic sense of ‘happy’ or ‘joyful’, but it has clear implications of homosexuality in the context of this novel. I have already mentioned Miss Jewsbury’s role in teaching her that society prefers homosexuality to be kept quiet, and in reinforcing her lesbian sexuality by making love to her after the pastor’s attack on it in the sermon. All of these incidents are very much in the tradition of the lesbian Bildungsroman where the female protagonist learns about her feelings and desires through the input and with the assistance of other women. (Zimmerman, 247ff)

Moreover, her education or her Bildung is commonly furthered by disappointments in love caused by failures or weaknesses on the parts of her early girlfriends. Zimmerman comments on this trope:

In almost every lesbian novel of development . . . the protagonist’s first lover is inadequate or inhibiting. She either betrays the young lesbian, usually leaving her for a man, or fails to protect her from the vindictive outside world. (253)

Certainly, this applies to Winterson’s novel. Melanie, Jeanette’s first lover, leaves her when they are discovered and the church applies pressure to her to repent. She ends up marrying a man who “knew, and forgave (them) both.”(121) In the same way, Katy allows her to take all the church’s censure for their relationship. She is happy to be lesbian, provided that no-one else knows about it. To use Zimmerman’s terms, Melanie leaves her for a man, while Katy fails to protect her from the outside world’s punishment.

If we consider that the lesbian Bildungsroman is a novel about education and development, the inclusion of these characters takes on a new significance in the same way the mother does. Melanie and Katy both represent pathways open to Jeanette, as she navigates the dangerous terrain of mainstream heterosexuality. Like them, she can also renounce her sexuality and conform. Like them, she can exchange her identity for social endorsement. However, they serve as a warning of the consequences of those actions - Melanie has become “almost vegetable” (166) by the end of the novel; Katy simply fades into insignificance and non-entity. Their placement in the novel, therefore, is to teach the protagonist the importance of remaining true to herself, as difficult and as painful as it might be.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, the lesbian Bildungsroman always contains some conflict or antipathy between the protagonist and her society. Zimmerman refers to this as “the violent attack of the homophobic social order on the emerging lesbian”(251), and states that it is a unique characteristic of this genre. In the case of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, this is vividly rendered in the scenes of exorcism:

It was 10 p.m. that same night before the elders went home. They had spent the day praying over me, laying hands on me, urging me to repent my sins before the Lord. ‘Renounce her, renounce her,’ the pastor kept saying, ‘it’s only the demon.’ (105)

On a literal and a figurative level, lesbianism is demonised by the society in which Jeanette lives. It is seen as a sin, as possession by evil forces, as a result of weakness. She has to find a way of resisting both their ideology and their rhetoric to hold onto her identity.

Interestingly, Jeanette chooses to co-opt and transform this symbol through the figure of the orange demon, which manifests itself after the first, failed exorcism. It is irrelevant whether this demon is a fantastic element within the novel or is simply a hallucination caused by lack of sleep, food and stress. She sees this demon as something intimately and inherently connected with her self. She insists that “if they want to get at my demons, they’ll have to get at me”(106), while the demon itself tells her “the demon you get depends on the colour of your aura, yours is orange which is why you’ve got me”(106). In this way, she manages to uses the church’s heterosexist, homophobic beliefs in a way that reinforces and reaffirms her identity as a lesbian.

Having hopefully shown that Oranges Are the Only Fruit conforms to the pattern of all novels of lesbian Bildung, I would like to move onto discussing the use of androgyny within the text. The androgynous protagonist seems to be a characteristic of a number of lesbian novels. As Joanne Frye writes, this arises in part because of the difficulty of having female protagonists in traditionally male forms of the novel:

If a woman writer risks choosing a male paradigmatic story for a female protagonist, she needs to relinquish consideration of any specifically female qualities: she cannot, then, deal with problems of sexuality, with female socialization, or with reproduction or anxiety about reproduction.(3)

This statement is inarguably extreme and inaccurate: the Bildungsroman is a male paradigmatic form, yet writers of the lesbian novel of development have managed to co-opt and transform it into an exploration of lesbian women’s sexuality, socialisation and reproductive issues. Nonetheless, she does have a point in that there is a great deal of patriarchal literary history and precedent behind the form. The writer may consciously resist it and work against it as part of her project, but it is difficult to escape it completely. As a result of this pressure, the protagonist can be seen as becoming androgynous.

However, the use of androgyny within lesbian or feminist texts can be for a more positive reason and have a more positive function. It is not presented as part of a patriarchal scheme, nor is it seen as something to fear or to avoid. On the contrary, according to the admittedly radical and separatist Mary Daly, androgyny can be a powerful tool of social change. She sees it as becoming a whole person, and argues that women can use it to challenge the artificial polarisation of human characteristics into gender characteristics. The becoming of androgynous (or gynandrous) people automatically implies a radical change in the fabric of society and in human consciousness and relationships. This radical change is clearly for the better, as it does away with gender inequality and injustice. (Pratt, 112)

Applying this to Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, however, Winterson hints that this might be part of her project in the following interchange between Jeanette and the orange demon:

‘What sex are you?’

‘Doesn’t matter does it? After all that’s your problem.’ (107)

We have already established that the orange demon is intimately connected with Jeanette, that it is a part of her identity. By having it refuse to claim a sex and brushing it off as irrelevant, Winterson seems to be saying that Jeanette need not define herself in terms of masculinity and femininity, or even male and female. She can define herself as both, as androgynous. She also implies that all the problems of homophobia and sexism arise from people defining themselves as either male or female. The demon’s androgyny is an escape from the problems that Jeanette experiences as a result of binaristic assumptions.

Primarily, however, Jeanette’s androgyny is constructed through her assumption of male roles within her stories and folk-tales. Paulina Palmer speaks about the power of stories to liberate from gender when she writes:

In ‘the theatres of the mind’, gender differences are subverted and our desires, anxieties and fears acted out by a myriad different figures, both male and female. As Cixous, commenting on this, remarks, ‘I is this matter, personal, exuberant, lively, masculine, feminine, or other in which I delights me and distresses me. (102)

In Jeanette’s case, these stories demonstrate a movement from traditionally feminine to traditionally masculine roles. At first, she begins transforming the female roles offered by fable into more empowering ones. The sensitive, tearful princess learns that she needs a purpose in life to give her fulfilment, or else she will be “in danger of being burnt by her own flame”(9). The perfect, if not flawless, woman refuses marriage and is killed for it. However, working only with female roles seems to limit her, so she begins to co-opt male parts in stories. The long tale of Winnet is a reworking of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice where she takes on the part of the usually male apprentice and where the male sorceror seems to represent her mother. Finally and most significantly, she takes on the role of Sir Perceval.

A brief biography of Perceval is necessary at this point, because his background is somewhat obscure and is often confused with that of Galahad. He is often referred to as the Perfect Fool in early Arthurian writings, due to his innocence and his purity of heart. This simplicity is a largely a result of his upbringing. He is the son of a mercenary, Gamuret, who places himself at the service of Islam because it fulfils his need for a spiritual knighthood. Nonetheless, after his father’s untimely death, his mother, Herzeloyde, raises Perceval in ignorance of his heritage. Nonetheless, regardless of his humble beginnings, his inherent nobility predestines him for a knighthood at the Round Table and for glory. In particular, along with Bors and Galahad, he is one of the three men who will find the Holy Grail. Moreover, unlike the majority of knights who tend to follow the traditions of courtly romance, Perceval is marked out by his steadfast devotion to his wife, Condwiramurs.

From this short background, it is obvious that he is representative of a certain type of heroic masculinity. (Interestingly, he is also a symbol of religious reconciliation - the son of a Muslim knight serving at the court of a Christian king, but that is irrelevant to the topic at hand.) He is a member of the Round Table that excludes women and extols the strength of men. He is part of the whole, chivalric code of manhood that saves maidens, slays monsters and performs glorious deeds. Moreover, his devotion to his wife suggests an endorsement of the heterosexual institution of marriage, and of the long tradition of romance and true love. Therefore, Perceval can be seen as masculinity at its most traditionally and heterosexually masculine. By having her lesbian, female protagonist assume his persona, Winterson is clearly suggesting an androgyny that has to arise where these two characters intersect. She is suggesting that Jeanette can be both masculine and feminine at the same time, that androgyny in the same way as homosexuality provides a way out of an oppressive and repressive system of binary opposites and absolutes.

Ultimately, that notion is at the heart of any novel of lesbian Bildung. The lesbian novel of development is about challenging the mainstream, about breaking free of the restraints placed on identity and sexuality by the dominant culture. In mainstream society, there may be “a wall for the body, a circle for the soul”(111), which both protect and limit the lesbian protagonist as she tries to find a way to get past them or to see over them. The lesbian Bildungsroman is all about breaking down walls, or about finding a way past them into the “secret garden” (120) where all “true quests end” (120) and where the protagonist can be truly herself. In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, it is this quest in all its forms that Jeanette undertakes in all her guises.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Frye, Joanne. “Women: Living Stories, Telling Lives”. Living Stories, Telling Lives. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. (1986)

Palmer, Paulina. “New developments in fiction: fantasy and sex”. Contemporary Lesbian Writing: Dreams, desire, difference. Buckingham: Open UP. (1993)

Pratt, Annis. “Love and Friendship between Women”. Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP. (1981)

Stimpson, Catherine R. “Zero Degree Deviancy: The Lesbian Novel in English”. Critical Inquiry 8. (1981-1982): 363-379.

Winterson, Jeanette. Interview on Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. (16 May 2002) http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/books/oranges_are_not.htm

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. London: Vintage. (2001)

Zimmerman, Bonnie. “Exiting from Patriarchy: The Lesbian Novel of Development”. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. ed. Abel, Hirsch and Langland. Hanover: University Press of New England. (1983)