Manchester University Press
1 Of priests and prophets
Abstract
This chapter discusses Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The back cover of the 1990 Pandora Press edition described Oranges as the ‘touching and humorous account of an unusual childhood with an extraordinary mother’. The unusual child is a little girl teasingly called Jeanette who, like Jeanette Winterson, lives in a working-class town in Lancashire with her adoptive parents, Jack and Louie. Like Winterson's own mother, the fictional Jeanette's foster mother is a militant member of the Pentecostal Evangelical Church and has taken great pains to educate her daughter in her faith. The novel relates Jeanette's process of maturation from admiring and obedient child, to rebellious adolescent and ideologically self-assured and free adult, as the progressive revelation of her lesbianism clashes with her mother's religious and moral ideas.
Abstract
This chapter discusses Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The back cover of the 1990 Pandora Press edition described Oranges as the ‘touching and humorous account of an unusual childhood with an extraordinary mother’. The unusual child is a little girl teasingly called Jeanette who, like Jeanette Winterson, lives in a working-class town in Lancashire with her adoptive parents, Jack and Louie. Like Winterson's own mother, the fictional Jeanette's foster mother is a militant member of the Pentecostal Evangelical Church and has taken great pains to educate her daughter in her faith. The novel relates Jeanette's process of maturation from admiring and obedient child, to rebellious adolescent and ideologically self-assured and free adult, as the progressive revelation of her lesbianism clashes with her mother's religious and moral ideas.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Epigraph v
- Dedication vii
- Contents ix
- Series editor’s foreword xi
- Acknowledgements xiii
- Abbreviations xv
- Introduction 1
- 1 Of priests and prophets 17
- 2 History and storytelling 54
- 3 The art of love 108
- 4 Multiple selves and worlds 154
- 5 Only connect . . . 203
- Conclusion 226
- Bibliography 235
- Index 251
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Epigraph v
- Dedication vii
- Contents ix
- Series editor’s foreword xi
- Acknowledgements xiii
- Abbreviations xv
- Introduction 1
- 1 Of priests and prophets 17
- 2 History and storytelling 54
- 3 The art of love 108
- 4 Multiple selves and worlds 154
- 5 Only connect . . . 203
- Conclusion 226
- Bibliography 235
- Index 251
