Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit



Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is Jeanette Winterson's somewhat autobiographical Coming of Age novel about a young adopted girl discovering she's a lesbian in a fanatically Christian community. It was later adapted as a Miniseries by the BBC.


 * Adaptation Name Change: Jeanette is renamed Jessica in the TV adaptation, possibly to reduce the autobiographical elements of the story.
 * Adults Are Useless: The only adult who even tries to help the protagonist is  who
 * Allegory Adventure: The fairy tales that pepper the text usually mirror Jeanette's life in some fashion.
 * Arc Words:
 * Author Avatar: Quite obviously Jeanette.
 * Biblical Motifs: Tons of them, including: casting the first stone, the walls of Jericho, Lot's wife, "to the pure all things are pure" (Titus 1.15), the number seven, and the names of the chapters.
 * Butch Lesbian: Kinda. Jeanette says she sees no similarity between herself and men -- except that she always wears trousers. In the miniseries this is averted: she almost never wears trousers and yet is attracted to the femme Melanie.
 * Coming Out Story
 * Cool Old Lady: Elsie
 * Double Standard Rape (Female on Female): Implied with the interactions between.
 * Girls Love: With Melanie and later Katy.
 * Holier Than Thou: Melanie's  has this attitude. So does Jeanette's mother and most of the congregation members.
 * Jane Eyre: It's Jeanette's mother's favorite book. Later we find out that
 * Lipstick Lesbian: In the miniseries.
 * Mentor Occupational Hazard:
 * Motif: The eponymous oranges. Also the rough brown pebble.
 * Nightmare Fetishist: Jeanette was like this as a child.
 * No Sex Allowed: This seems to be the rule in Jeanette's community. Her parents adopted her to avoid having sex.
 * Only Sane Man: Jeanette for most of the story.
 * Religion Is Wrong: Or at least fundamentalism is.
 * Spiteful Spit
 * Title Drop: Towards the end, when Jeanette's mother winds up with a ton of pineapple and everybody at the church eats lots of pineapple dishes for a while.
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: Though all the other lesbians in the miniseries are LipstickLesbians, the two who run the sweet shop are a butch/femme couple.
 * The Fundamentalist: Jeanette's mother.
 * Theme Naming: The chapters are named for the first eight books of the Christian Bible.