Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

I've got no idea where this blog might go so it could we be a load of shite. I await the result as eagerly as you. (Looking back, I should probably say spoilers ahead)

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (Jeanette Winterson, 1986) is the sort of book that made me want to study literature. Forget Sense and Sensibility, Mary Barton, even Jane Eyre - Oranges, for me, is what literature should be about.

First of all, it's funny. Not just funny, but hilarious at times - one of the funniest books I've ever read, in fact. I can't remember who said it, but to paraphrase, they said all great literature should have comedy: life is funny, and what is literature if not a reflection of life? The aforementioned Sense and Sensibility is supposed to be funny, but let's get this straight - it's not. Not even close. There does seem to be a dearth of wit amongst the mid-19th century. Maybe the period just wasn't particularly funny; in all walks of culture there are celebrated artists from that period, except comedy. Had it even been invented? Who knows. I digress.

The star of Oranges, at least in comedic terms, is undoubtedly Jeanette's Mother. It's not just her puzzling religious beliefs that are funny (she at one point declares Jeanette's sudden deafness to be aresult of Jeanette being 'full of Spirit' and leaves it at that), but she is also clearly batshit crazy. Jeanette returns home once to find a letter from her mother that reads: "Dear Jeanette, we have gone to the hospital to pray for Aunt Bessie. Her leg is very loose. Love, Mother". What in God's name is a 'loose leg'?! Of course, she becomes less funny once she exiles Jeanette for being a lesbian, bitch.

While other study books this semester deal with themes in a broad way, for example the comment on the educated middle-class male in Jekyll and Hyde, Oranges is very much more focused. It took me a while to understand what the title related to, but once I had done it was very staisfying.

"Oranges are not the only fruit?" said my friend. "That's a pretty obvious statment isn't it?"
"No", I should have replied, "It may be obvious to us, but for someone that's been raised in a household where orange is the only fruit, where God is the only way of thinking and heterosexuality is the only possible sexuality, then the realisation that orange is not, in fact, the only fruit, is a powerful one". However I didn't say that because I suck at thinking on the spot.

One thing I didn't expect was the mother's realisation that orange is not the only fruit. Eventually she welcomes allows Jeanette back into the house, and uses an enormous amount of tinned pineapples as the primary foodstuff for a mission to an un-named place where coloured people live in the blind assumption that black people must like pineapples. It's a start, at least.