Oranges are not the Only Fruit starts out when Jeanette is seven years old and living with her adoptive parents in England. Jeanette’s mother is very religious, and her father is not around much. She gets pretty lonely; until she is seven years old she has been homeschooled. Her mother is so religious that she even taught Jeanette how to read from the Bible. Because Jeanette’s mother is so religious, she almost brainwashes her daughter to become a missionary. However, once Jeanette begins school things change. When Jeanette is seven years old, she loses her hearing. Her mother and the church think it is something religious when it is really just a sickness, so she is admitted into the hospital. When Jeanette is well again so goes back to school, but things do not improve for her. She is still an outcast. When they do a project in school, Jeanette always picks something to do that is biblical, and because of that she is made fun of.
As Jeanette grows up she realizes that she does not believe everything her church tells her. The thing she disagrees about the most is the sermon they had about the nature of perfection. However, she still is at her mother’s side even though she is starting to have different beliefs.
As she starts her teen years she is starting to think more about romance. She listens to other woman talking about their husbands, and she wonders if she wants one. When Jeanette is walking downtown she meets Melanie, a girl working at a fish stall. Jeanette gets a job washing dishes at an ice-cream shop, and eventually Melanie and Jeanette become friends. Jeanette brings Melanie to church so she can be saved by Jesus. After that, they spend more and more time together which eventually leads into them falling in love ...
... middle of paper ...
...: 79-88. Academic Search Primer. Web. 16 Apr. 2014.
Grosz, E. A., and Elspeth Probyn. "Destruction." Sexy bodies: the strange carnalities of feminism. London: Routledge, 1995. 266-273. Print.
Hinds, Hilary. "Oranges Are not the Only Fruit: Reaching audiences other texts cannot reach." Immortal, invisible: lesbians and the moving image. London: Routledge, 1995. 52-69. Print.
Morrison, Jago. "‘Who Cares About Gender at a Time Like This?’ Love, Sex and the Problem of Jeanette Winterson." Journal of Gender Studies 15.2 (2006): 169-180. Print.
Skeggs, Beverley. "Questioning the 'ordinary' woman: Oranges are not the Only Fruit , text and viewer." Feminist cultural theory: process and production. Manchester: Manchester University Press ;, 1995. 169-170. Print.
Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges are not the only fruit. New York, N.Y.: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987. Print.
Lori was the first one to leave for New York City after graduation, later, Jeanette followed her and moved into her habitat with her. Jeanette promptly found a job as a reporter, the two sisters were both living their dream life away from their miserable parents. It wasn’t difficult for them since they cultured to be independent and tough. Everything was turning out great for them and decided to tell their younger siblings to move in with them, and they did. Jeanette was finally happy for once, enjoying the freedom she had and not having to be moved every two weeks. She then found a guy whom she married and accustomed her lifestyle. Furthermore, her parents still couldn’t have the funds for a household or to stay in stable occupation, so they decided to move in with Jeanette and her siblings. Jeanette at that moment felt like she was never going to have an ordinary life because her parents were going to shadow her.
The story follows three girls- Jeanette, the oldest in the pack, Claudette, the narrator and middle child, and the youngest, Mirabella- as they go through the various stages of becoming civilized people. Each girl is an example of the different reactions to being placed in an unfamiliar environment and retrained. Jeanette adapts quickly, becoming the first in the pack to assimilate to the new way of life. She accepts her education and rejects her previous life with few relapses. Claudette understands the education being presented to her but resists adapting fully, her hatred turning into apathy as she quietly accepts her fate. Mirabella either does not comprehend her education, or fully ignores it, as she continually breaks the rules and boundaries set around her, eventually resulting in her removal from the school.
As Jeannette gets older she realizes that her parents differences are not something to be proud of. She comes to this conclusion at first when she is in the hospital after getting severe burns from her mother letting her cook hot dogs at the age of three. She realizes that it is not right for a parent to let their three year old to be cooking. Another example of when she realized that is when she had to eat food from a garbage can at school while all the others had brought food from home. She decided to hide her shame by eating the food from the garbage can inside the girls washroom. As Jeannette gets older she changes a little bit more by her perspective of things when she meets Billy. Billy is a juvenile delinquent that also has a father for a drunk. When Billy laughs at his own father when he was sleeping from drinking so much the night before, Jeannette argues with him saying that no one should make fun of their own father. Billy
Towards the middle of the memoir, the theme is shown through the irony of Jeannette’s mother’s situation as well as Jeannette’s feelings towards
Jeanette's parents taught her the importance of knowledge from a very young age which also shaped her to become the person she became after her childhood. THroughout the story Jeannette is always learning, always reading, and educating herself to become more knowledgeable. She even at one point in the book begins a rock collection on different types of rocks which she sells to make money. Jeanette's parents instilled a large amount of positive traits and characteristics through their life of poverty to craft the amazing women Jeannette grew up to
In the first section of the book it starts off with a little girl named Tasha. Tasha is in the Fifth grade, and doesn’t really have many friends. It describes her dilemma with trying to fit in with all the other girls, and being “popular”, and trying to deal with a “Kid Snatcher”. The summer before school started she practiced at all the games the kid’s play, so she could be good, and be able to get them to like her. The girls at school are not very nice to her at all. Her struggle with being popular meets her up with Jashante, a held back Fifth ...
“She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight,” (11). The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching, God by Zora Neale Hurston, tells a story of a woman, Janie Crawford’s quest to find her true identity that takes her on a journey and back in which she finally comes to learn who she is. These lessons of love and life that Janie comes to attain about herself are endowed from the relationships she has with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.
This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...
Rubin, Gail. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." American Feminist Thought at Century's End : A Reader. Ed. Linda S. Kauffman Cambridge, Ma : Blackwell, 1993. 3-64.
Ultimately, The Gender Knot provides explanations regarding misogynistic practices, and the protagonists of “Girl” and “Mona Lisa Smile” demonstrate how damaging these practices are. The caustic effects of the limitation of female sexuality are observed in the multitude of rules for women in “Girl,” and in the prohibition of birth control in “Mona Lisa Smile.” These two works also provide insights into the ways that gender roles constrict the lives of women. Through Johnson’s theories, one can come to a better
"Two Kinds" by Amy Tan is about the intricacies and complexities in the relationship between a mother and daughter. Throughout the story, the mother imposes upon her daughter, Jing Mei, her hopes and dreams for her. Jing Mei chooses not what her mother wants of her but only what she wants for herself. She states, "For, unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could be only me" (Tan 1). Thus this "battle of wills" between mother and daughter sets the conflict of the story.
Kendal, Diana. "Sex and Gender." Sociology in Our Times 3.Ed. Joanna Cotton. Scarborough: Nelson Thomson, 2004. 339-367
Wilton, Tamsin. "Which One's the Man? The Heterosexualisation of Lesbain Sex." Gender, Sex, and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University, 2009. 157-70. Print.
Overall, we can see that 200 years later we are still attempting to escape from the gender line created through society’s image of men and women. Men and women still fail to communicate their feelings within their relationships, resulting in an overall unhealthy marriage. Today women and men attempt to challenge these gender stereotypes by taking on the roles of the opposite gender, but like in the “Yellow Wallpaper” are immediately met with “heavy opposition” and disapproval through the process. Although we may seem as though we are improving in escaping from the gendered stereotypes, the past will always be recurrent in a majority of relationships today if dominance within the relationship is not equally balance between both sexes.
Grosz, Elizabeth. Sexual Difference and the Problem of Essentialism. From The Essential Difference. Ed. Naomi Schar and Elizabeth Weed. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994.