49 pages • 1 hour read
Jeanette WintersonOranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Judges”
With the backing of the church, Jeanette’s mother decides to throw her daughter out of the house. She claims that Jeanette is evil and makes her ill. Jeanette understands that this is because of how her mother feels about who Jeanette loves, but Jeanette still refuses to associate with men.
In another interspersed fairy tale, King Arthur sits at his empty court, Sir Perceval, his youngest knight, gone. He thinks of better times, before the many betrayals of his court.
The real trouble with her mother begins when Jeanette and Katy go on a week’s vacation to the boarding house in Morecambe and are caught in bed together the very first night. Jeanette tells the woman, a friend of her mother’s, that Katy was just helping her to meet with Melanie and that the fault is all her own. Katy is safe but Jeanette must leave the boarding house, and when she arrives home, her mother breaks all of the plates in the house and calls the pastor. The pastor believes that Jeanette is a victim of demons, but her mother sees her as a villain.
At church, Elsie returns from a long stay in the hospital and tells Jeanette to visit her after everyone is done squabbling over her and her demons. When Jeanette joins Elsie at her house, she tells Jeanette that she always knew Jeanette had feelings for women and even told Ms. Jewsbury, who now lives with another woman teaching music in a different town. Elsie assures her that she would never let what is happening to Jeanette occur if she had not gotten sick.
The pastor reaches out to the Council and when he hears back, announces that women have too much power in the congregation and that this is why Jeanette acts like a man by pursuing romantic relationships with women. There is an uproar, but Jeanette’s mother soon declares her agreement. Elsie collapses, and in the aftermath, Jeanette is barred from preaching.
Returning to the fairy tale, Sir Perceval is on the road, miserable, and thinks of better times with Arthur and the other knights.
The pastor wants Jeanette and her mother to do a week’s retreat in Morecambe, but Jeanette refuses, declaring that she is leaving the church. When she refuses to repent, the pastor gives up and her mother banishes her from the house. Jeanette plans to stay with a sympathetic teacher and work extra days to pay her rent. She leaves her mother’s house, promising herself that she will be strong and not let her pain show until she is in a place where she can let it out.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Ruth”
The text presents another fairy tale. According to the tale, magic was once very important to the kingdom and people used it to protect themselves. Their understanding of and ability to wield magic stemmed from a sense of inner control. Winnet walks through the forest and notices that she is being followed. The man on the other side of the stream is a sorcerer. Winnet is wary of him but when he offers her food and a chalk circle of protection from him, she agrees to speak with him. He gives her a brown pebble to close the circle around herself but tricks her. He wants to know her name, and when she refuses, he tells her that he can only break the circle if he knows it, meaning she is trapped. He wants her name to make her his apprentice, and she tells him he must guess it. They play Hang the Man and she gives him a hint. The game proves less difficult than she hoped and he soon guesses her name: Winnet Stonejar.
Winnet joins him at his castle and he teachers her his ways. After a time, she forgets how she came to the castle and soon believes his word that she is his daughter. He is kind to his villagers but expects their absolute devotion. At the great feast, Winnet makes friends with a stranger, and when she introduces him to her father, the sorcerer disappears. Later that night, the sorcerer returns and claims to the village that the boy spoiled his daughter and locks the boy away. Winnet convinces the boy to repent and blame her for their relationship, and when he does, Winnet is banished. Abednego, her favorite raven, advises her to leave her father’s kingdom and gives her his heart, a brown pebble, telling her it turned to stone because he stayed in the kingdom. He tells her that her magic will still work away from her father. Before she leaves, the sorcerer, disguised as a mouse, ties an invisible thread to one of her buttons.
Jeanette begins working for the undertaker and the woman who makes wreaths while also driving an ice cream truck. Her competition is Birtwistle, a horse-drawn, home-made ice cream business, often employed for special occasions. On her Saturday route, she passes near Elsie’s house and sees a crowd. She goes in, hearing whispers of a funeral and after some prodding, her mother tells her that Elsie fell and died. The pastor speaks with Jeanette and when she continues to deny any wrongdoing, he leads her out. She sells ice cream to the crowd outside and is scolded by Mrs. White for profiting off a tragedy; Jeanette is also told she cannot attend the funeral. When Jeanette returns the truck for the day, she requests some days off.
Returning to the fairy tale, Winnet walks in the woods, lost, and almost dies from malnourishment until a woman revives her and brings her to her village. Winnet struggles to learn their language and must hide her true self from them, as the villagers hate her father. She soon sets her sights on the far-off city, though others discourage her from going.
Joe, the undertaker, tells Jeanette that they have Elsie and tells her to visit. Joe and the woman who makes the wreaths leave for a movie, and that night, Jeanette cleans Joe’s van before saying her own goodbyes to Elsie. The woman who makes the wreaths falls off Joe’s scooter that night and is confined to bedrest for the near future. Because of this, Jeanette muse serve food at Elsie’s services, and the congregation is not pleased with her presence and soon storm out. Ms. Jewsbury comes to honor Elsie and invites Jeanette back to her house. Jeanette refuses but tells her that she is in a good place and has a plan for the future. Jeanette soon gets a new job at a mental hospital, a perfect situation for her, as she can live there for free and save money.
Winnet realizes she must sail the sea to reach the city and studies boat making and rope work in the village to prepare for her voyage. The night before her departure, she dreams of a staircase between her eyes and descends into her head. There, she finds a roundabout horse and rides it, getting dizzy before waking up. The next day, she leaves the village and begins her journey to the city.
Jeanette is in the city and someone asks her about the last time she saw her mother. She thinks of the pain of returning home and does not know how to respond. She is also asked what would have happened to her if she stayed. Jeanette thinks she would be a prophet rather than a preacher. Winnet arrives in the city, ready to escape her past life.
On her way to her hometown, Jeanette’s train ride is complicated by snow clogging the tracks. She arrives near Christmas, and when she walks in, her mother is playing music on her new electric keyboard. Her mother tells her that the Society for the Lost shuttered and that the guesthouse in Morecambe struggles because of money-laundering in the organization and health violations at the guesthouse. Jeanette finds that their conversations are uneasy and that her mother will not look her in the eye.
Sir Perceval arrives at a castle and sleeps, dreaming of the vision of the Holy Grail that sent all of the knights of King Arthur’s court on quests to find it, fracturing their organization. He laments that he ever left Arthur at all.
The next day, Jeanette’s mother wakes her up and sends her shopping. Jeanette visits Mrs. Arkwright and they go out for tea together. Mrs. Arkwright tells Jeanette that it was good of her to get out of the town and shares her own plans to move to Torremolinos and sell toys to tourists after she earns enough money from insurance for secretly burning down her shop. She swears Jeanette to secrecy and tells her that the business is struggling because of new innovations such as HVAC systems that are hostile to the local insects.
After tea, Jeanette walks around town thinking of whether there is an impression of her former self still lingering from the past. She thinks of how she misses God and her love for him, though she does not believe that he betrayed her, but rather that his followers did. She thinks of the corruption of romantic love and how the destructive nature of men excludes them from her love. She knows she needs someone who will love her fiercely and not betray her.
Jeanette recalls running into Melanie, who now has a baby, and Melanie denies that her relationship with Jeanette was anything real. She tells Jeanette that not much actually happened between them and says that she often writes to Jeanette’s mother. They worked together on the town’s first mission for people of color and only sent canned pineapple with them, thinking it was all they ate. When they did so, Jeanette’s mother said, “[O]ranges are not the only fruit” (177). Jeanette continues walking around town and remembers her now dead dog and thinks of all the painful thoughts and emotions this visit brings up. When she arrives home, her mother is listening to her new CB radio, receiving her mission reports. With her mother busy, Jeanette goes to bed, missing the past.
Sir Perceval stays awake long after his host turns in and feels the pull of the past. He dreams that he is a spider, cut loose from its web, that runs away.
Jeanette stays until just past Christmas. Her mother now helps Pastor Finch with families whose children have demons and “Unnatural Passions.” She often uses Jeanette as an example and their past experiences as a credit to her expertise. Jeanette does not see much of her parents during this time because they are busy at church. One night before she leaves, Jeanette’s mother receives news that the owner of the Morecambe guesthouse is in trouble. She took to drink and found a job at an old folks’ home. She also began a relationship with the former exorcist to the Bishop of Bermuda. The two are caught practicing voodoo on the more senile patients, and Jeanette’s mother runs out to call Pastor Finch. While her mother is gone, Jeanette thinks of how she is stuck between joining a real family and permanently leaving her own. She thinks of the ties she has to her mother and how her mother is still able to pull her back in.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
The final two chapters of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit share distinct connections to the seventh and eighth books of the Bible, Judges and Ruth. In Judges, the Israelites fall from the grace of God by not following the laws laid out for them and are punished. In the novel, the chapter “Judges” follows the church’s discovery of Jeanette’s relationship with Katy and the ensuing fallout as she leaves the church and is evicted from her mother’s home. In the background of this is the punishment delivered to the congregation for Jeanette’s relationship passed down from the church’s council: “The real problem, it seemed, was going against the teachings of St. Paul, and allowing women power in the church. Our branch of the church had never thought about it, we’d always had strong women, and the women organised everything” (135). The women of the church are to be forbidden from preaching because of Jeanette. This punishment is a direct result of her relationship with Katy and demonstrates the institutional fallout for her disobeying the faith of the church.
In the book of Ruth, Ruth is commended for her commitment to her mother-in-law, Naomi. Both women are widows, and after their husbands die, Naomi tells Ruth to return home, but Ruth refuses to leave her. Some people interpret LGBTQIA+ undertones in their relationship, while others see it as a story of devotion to a mother figure. Either way, the events of the chapter “Ruth” connect with the depiction in the biblical story. In this final chapter, Jeanette is living her life freely in the city, pursuing love without shame. However, she comes home, and despite not feeling completely welcome, feels a connection to her mother; in an allusion to the fairy tale about Winnet and the sorcerer, Jeanette says of her mother: “[S]he had tied a thread around my button, to tug when she pleased” (182). Jeanette cannot leave her mother forever and break away entirely. She still feels a connection to her and comes home even when it is detrimental. In some ways, she reflects Ruth’s connection to her mother-in-law, as both women share a strong connection to the mother figures in their lives.
In the final two chapters of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette begins to live her life authentically, not allowing the church to force her to give up her lesbian identity. The discovery of her and Katy leads to another confrontation with her mother and the church, though this time she decides to leave the church rather than repent. This is catalyzed by her mother’s insistence that she leave the house: “My mother wanted me to move out, and she had the backing of the pastor and most of the congregation, or so she said. I made her ill, made the house ill, brought evil into the church” (128). In this final confrontation with her mother, the Religious Impact on Family Relationships proves to be too strong for Jeanette and her mother to coexist. Her mother’s decision to evict her comes from the perception that Jeanette is living in sin, and that the sin makes her mother ill. But noticeably, her mother also mentions Jeanette’s impact on the church community as a reason for wanting her daughter to leave. Jeanette’s mother values the well-being of the church over that of her daughter. Her mother’s sentiment that the church is her family proves true in this instance as she chooses them instead of Jeanette. Jeanette’s fate in the house is decided by her mother’s devotion, and her claim that she has the support of the pastor and the church shows that she values their input and that they are a part of the decision making when it comes to her household affairs.
Jeanette leaves the house and begins a life on her own, first in the town, and then later in the city. As she grows and matures, she becomes more comfortable living her authentic self and learns more and more about what she requires from a romantic partner. In “Ruth,” Jeanette meditates on what she needs in romance: “As it is, I can’t settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me” (175). The confidence with which Jeanette identifies her romantic needs is a sign of her development as a person. By living away from her mother and the church, Jeanette can fully realize her Sexuality and Personal Identity. She lives a life away from the judgment and condemnation of her sexuality and explore what it means to be a woman who loves women. She looks back at her life and her needs and can identify what she needs to have a successful relationship in which she feels valued and supported. Her wish for romance is no longer merely defined by loving women and not men but becomes a more complex view of the kind of person she needs. She has a deeper understanding of herself and what others bring to a relationship.
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By Jeanette Winterson
