Discuss Jeanette Winterson’s exploration of sexuality and identity in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

Module: Twentieth Century Women Novelists (Level 6)

Abstract

This piece of work is about Jeanette Winterson’s novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical novel about a young girl coming of age and with that, coming to terms with her sexual identity. This essay explores the work of Winterson alongside Adrienne Rich’s Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, which is used as a theoretical framework to analyse Jeanette’s exploration of her sexual identity outside the cornerstones of the patriarchal society she finds herself embedded within.