Oranges is a comforting novel. Its heroine is someone on the outside of life. She’s poor, she’s working class but she has to deal with the big questions that cut across class, culture and colour. Everyone, at some time in their life, must choose whether to stay with a ready-made world that may be safe but which is also limiting, or to push forward, often past the frontiers of commonsense, into a personal place, unknown and untried. Winterson writes in her introduction to Oranges, and in this

Oranges is a comforting novel. Its heroine is someone on the outside of life. She’s poor, she’s working class but she has to deal with the big questions that cut across class, culture and colour. Everyone, at some time in their life, must choose whether to stay with a ready-made world that may be safe but which is also limiting, or to push forward, often past the frontiers of commonsense, into a personal place, unknown and untried. Winterson writes in her introduction to Oranges, and in this semi-autobiographical novel, that's the clincher.



Before Jeanette Winterson became one of the better known names in lesbian literature, she was a devout Christian, being groomed for missionary work by her deeply religious and very obviously Christian zealot of a mother. Before Winterson graduated from Oxford and began to teach writing at the University of Manchester, she was practically illiterate - home-schooled by her mother, and her education, limited to religious texts. Winterson writes her own story as a novel, as fiction, because, as she says, fiction is easier to accept than fact. And also, for whatever reason, fiction has a greater outreach, or so I believe. Fiction needs its specifics, its anchors. It needs also to pass beyond them. It needs to be weighed down with characters we can touch and know, it needs also to fly right through them into a larger, universal space.



The chapters in the book are divided as chapters are in the Old Testament; from Genesis to Ruth. In Genesis, as the Biblical Genesis talks about the Origin, or history of mankind, Winterson talks about the story of her origins and her history, her background - her adoption, her daily routine that came to be, and her involvement in the church. She talks about how she was groomed to be a missionary, and how that was the only life she knew. For her second chapter, which she calls Exodus after the Book of Exodus, Jeanette's mother is forced into putting Jeanette into a school - literally, a movement from homeschooling to regular schooling. In the Book of Leviticus, the essence is mostly preaching - it is about rituals and morality, and about staying true to Christian principles. In Oranges, Leviticus plays quite the same role as in the Bible. In that, Jeanette's mother preaches about morality and religion and righteousness, while Jeanette talks about her mother's role in Church. Her mother also gives Jeanette instructions, advice on what she needs to do to fulfill her destiny as a missionary. One of the defining features of Numbers is the loss of faith in god by men, and their subsequent smiting. In Numbers, in a way, Jeanette perhaps starts losing faith in god. But more importantly, she loses faith in her mother for having lied to her. Just like the Israelis start doubting god for putting them through the tests that he did, subconsciously, Jeanette begins decoupling from the oppressive Bible herself, and for her, it starts by falling in love. With a girl. Deuteronomy. Part 5. A large part of the Biblical Deuteronomy deals with the journey aspect of Moses's journey and the Promised Land. In Oranges, Winterson focuses on the act of travel and how it relates to the larger picture. About how it enhances curiosity and discovery. Winterson also talks about another kind of promised land; about discovery of new lands, and about those lost cities that inspire stories, cities like El Dorado and Atlantis. In Joshua, Jeanette is exorcised for her "Unnatural Passions", and in Judges, her mother forces her to move out. The former perhaps has links to God instructing Joshua as it correlates to her demons instructing her, while the latter seems to draw from Israelis being oppressed by their kings, their judges; just like Jeanette is oppressed by her mother. In Judges, Israel is left to fend for itself after the events of the book, just like Jeanette is left to fend for herself after moving out. Ruth ultimately seems like a fitting end to this treatise because its eponymous book in the Old Testament remains among the most progressive of the Biblical books.



Oranges is a heartbreaking, yet hopeful story of a young girl who discovers that she is more than the oppressive, fanatically religious household she grew up in. Jeanette is severely oppressed by her fanatically religious mother and their equally fanatical community. A community that shuns people for having sex on a Sunday. A community that has taken upon itself to convert anyone who isn't a Christian. A community full of missionaries.



She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies. Jeanette's mother is a strong character, both in terms of her role in the book, and in Jeanette's life. Just, it's not a positive kind of strong. She's domineering and opinionated - while also being willfully judgemental and ignorant. She judged the poor for being too poor, and the rich for being too rich. Since so many people we knew went there, it was hardly fair of her but she never was particularly fair; she loved and she hated, and she hated Maxi Ball. Her next door neighbours for having too much sex, and two random women because she suspected (rightly) that they were lesbians. She was just another religious fanatic waiting for the end of the world while forcing her views on everyone else. Her singular aim in life? That Jeanette become a missionary. We stood on the hill and my mother said, ‘This world is full of sin.’ We stood on the hill and my mother said, ‘You can change the world.’ Her husband was far more docile and easygoing, but for the most part, because he had no choice, and also knew that raising his voice was futile. Her husband was an easy-going man, but I knew it depressed him.



Since I was born I had assumed that the world ran on very simple lines, like a larger version of our church. Now I was finding that even the church was sometimes confused. This was a problem.



Jeanette's mother was, of course, a creationist. ‘Did you hear that?’ she demanded, and poked her head round the kitchen door. ‘The family life of snails, it’s an Abomination, it’s like saying we come from monkeys.’ And I'm sure she did not believe in educating the people about sex. Her homeschooling of her daughter resulted in her daughter being woefully backward in class. Her religious views, in her daughter terrifying the living daylights of her classmates. Jeanette's essays were inspired by Hell and other Biblical phenomena, as were her projects. I felt terrible for her, because her mother's lifestyle, so to speak, made her not only friendless, but also the butt of all jokes in school. Over the years I did my best to win a prize; some wish to better the world and still scorn it. But I never succeeded; there’s a formula, a secret, I don’t know what, that people who have been to public school or Brownies seem to understand.



Jeanette's mother's faith or fanaticism went to the extent that she refused to admit her daughter to the hospital when she fell sick. And had to be persuaded (by that, I mean someone else got Jeanette admitted) to do so. In the hospital, as at home, Jeanette was given oranges to keep her energy up. Because oranges are the only fruit. Her friend Elise, old, eccentric, and surprisingly more open minded than Jeanette's mother kept her company. Elise was lovable, despite all. Elsie got very cross. She was an absolutist, and had no time for people who thought cows didn’t exist unless you looked at them. Once a thing was created, it was valid for all time. Its value went not up nor down.



Jeanette finds solace in books, and one day, quite by accident, as it always does, falls in love. With a girl. Of course, it doesn't sit well with the community, and she's exorcised before being kicked out for her 'sins'. She does odd jobs to support herself. She moves to a nearby city, but the questions plague her. Jeanette accepts herself for who she is, but doesn't renounce her faith, in that, she starts believing in a more abstract idea of god. Which, I'm agnostic, so I don't care, but it must have been a real task to reconcile that gap between who she was, who she is, and who she would become. I could have been a priest instead of a prophet. The priest has a book with the words set out. Old words, known words, words of power. Words that are always on the surface. Words for every occasion. The words work. They do what they’re supposed to do; comfort and discipline. The prophet has no book. The prophet is a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not always set into meaning. The prophets cry out because they are troubled by demons.



Oranges may seem very simple at its outset, but it has to it layers. The subtle Biblical references interspersed with the more obvious ones. The degrees to all the characters. Granted, they're based from facts, but the nuances, the layers to what is a very simple story, make this book spectacular.



Oranges is comforting not because it offers any easy answers but because it tackles difficult questions. Once you can talk about what troubles you, you are some way towards handling it.



