Monika's Blog

As the book concludes, it was interesting to me that the ending wasn’t really a happy ending, but it also wasn’t sad. It felt a little unsatisfying to end the book without a traditional resolution, but overall I found it to be nice and somewhat peaceful. It feels like ultimately neither Jeanette or her mother really got exactly what they wanted from each other in life, but they are content and more or less okay with things the way they are. The fantasy story of Winnet feels very similar to Jeanette’s own story, and it reinforces the idea of this book as a Hero’s Journey. Just as Winnet had a dream about looking inside herself, Jeanette also was looking for herself for the whole book. In the end, it feels like Jeanette accepts both sides of herself, the religious upbringing as well as the fact that she is a lesbian. This fits into the “return with the elixir” part of the Hero’s Journey as the hero returns home because in this case, the “treasure” that Jeanette has gained is being conten...

As the book is starting to come to an end, we finally see Jeanette deal with the conflict between her religious background and her homosexuality. This whole time Jeanette has been trying to be both things at the same time, a religious follower and a lesbian, but she finds that this is just not possible. At the end of the chapter, Jeanette leaves her mother which is a big deal on her journey. It’s interesting that the chapter ends with her saying that her first day away from her religious life was, “not judgement day, but another morning” (Winterson, 281). This makes it feel like Jeanette made the right choice and that she is realizing that her homosexuality is not causing the end of the world, and that it is fine to live her life like this. Overall, this chapter feels like it was inevitable as I think we all got the feeling that Jeanette couldn’t be a true follower of God and a lesbian, the Church at the time just wouldn’t allow it. This also makes the book feel even more like the Hero...

This chapter called   Joshua  is a big chapter in the book since it feels like Jeanette’s identity develops a lot throughout, and because it involves some real drama and conflict. When Jeanette confesses her love for Melanie to her mother, it leads to exorcisms which are very hard to endure for Jeanette and can be compared to torture. This chapter felt like a kind of peak for Jeanette’s inner conflict since she is being literally held captive by her mother and the church, yet it also seems that Jeanette is more confident and sure about her own sexuality and identity. It is also interesting that Jeanette has the desire to be both a lesbian and a follower of God, when the church says this isn’t possible. I would think that she would want to leave the church completely because of how they treated her, yet she still wants to stay and even gives sermons at a church retreat. Another interesting part of the story are more of Jeanette’s fantasy stories that are woven throughout. After...

This chapter was very different than the others because it wasn’t directly related to the story or Jeanette or anything. Instead, it is about stories and how they are created to help us remember the past and to keep it alive in a way. They also talk about history and how we think of history as being objective when in reality, historians can make things up just like stories, or they can leave things out if they don’t like those parts of the history. In fact, history can be wrong because it denies what actually happened in the past in certain ways and often this is intentional. In the end, we need to be aware that history and stories are subjective, so we should create our own. The narrator in this chapter uses the image of a sandwich, you can take various parts of stories and histories, and put them together to create your own version. I think the book is trying to tell us that nothing is 100% the way it is explained to us, and that we should be a little doubtful or skeptical of history...

Chapter 4 of   Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit  feels like a major part of the story because Jeanette finally falls in love and goes against her upbringing. The fact that Jeanette is a lesbian is a good payoff from the buildup in previous chapters. Before, I didn’t know for sure if she was a lesbian, but the earlier chapters hinted at her being different and independent in her own way. I overall found Jeanette and Melanie’s relationship to be very wholesome and good so far, so I look forward to seeing what will happen in the future. Going back to the beginning of the chapter, I am getting used to the fantasy/dream parts of the book and how they connect to the story. The beginning of this chapter involved Jeanette dreaming about marriage to a man and how she is unsure if there are any good men in the world. It’s interesting to see how Winterson uses these dreams and fantasy stories to tie into the real world of Jeanette. Now that we have read a lot of the book, I am more comfort...

This chapter was interesting because it mostly revolved around the idea of perfection and how Jeanette had her first “theological disagreement” (Winterson, 133). A lot of the chapter involves a story about a prince looking for his perfect woman and it made this chapter feel a little different. In Jeanette’s story, the Prince tries for years to find his perfect bride, but when he does, she tells him that perfection isn’t what he thought it was and that by different, we can all be perfect for each other. I found this to be an interesting tale that Jeanette created because she creates her own version of perfection which differs from the version she hears in church. In the end, the Prince kills her, which I found to be unexpected, but it definitely makes the Prince feel much more evil than he was previously in the story. Ultimately, the woman had a more mature and complex idea of perfection, which angered the Prince. Given that I’ve read from other students that Jeanette comes out as a les...

  After reading this chapter, it feels like some of my confusion about the book is being explained. In this section of the book, we learn more about the main character, Jeanette, as well as her family background. Even before reading the chapter, I noticed the name was “Exodus” which I tried to keep in mind while reading. I am somewhat familiar with the story of Exodus in the Bible and how slaves in Egypt freed themselves, so I kept that in mind while reading. Overall, Jeanette’s journey of being different than her upbringing are starting to be more obvious, and the imagery and characters are becoming a little more clear. For example, Jeanette’s mother always brought her oranges to eat in the hospital, and Jeanette even says “oranges are the only fruit” at one point. Since this goes against the title of the book, I would think that Jeanette will later realize that oranges are not the only fruit, and that in a way, there are more options in life than the one you were born with. This ...

My initial reaction was mostly about how this is different than   What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.  In the short stories, everything happened so quickly and characters were barely introduced, sometimes not really at all. Here in   Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit,  we get a lot more time to learn about the characters, especially the daughter and her mother. I found a lot of the writing to be a bit funny and humorous, but some of the actual events in the book are a little confusing and abstract, so I had to re-read some sections but overall I enjoyed getting to know these characters. So far, the mother seems very religious in a kind of fearful and old-fashioned way, while the daughter is a little more independent and isn’t as involved in religion as her mother. I also noticed that the chapter titles of the book are from the Bible, so I wonder how the mother’s religion will be a part of the book in the later chapters. I was thinking that this chapter probably ...