Category: Fall 2016

“I did remember… never since read Jane Eyre” (Winterson, pp. 74-75)

This small paragraph holds a lot of important details in Jeanette’s life. It’s in this paragraph that she discovers her mother had been lying to her about the ending of her favorite childhood book, Jane Eyre. Not only that, but she also discovers that she was adopted. Jeanette’s whole life is constantly controlled by her mother and religion, often times leaving little space for Jeanette to live her own life. Growing up, her mother always read Jane Eyre to her over and over again, but Jeanette was never allowed to read it. I think that is symbolic towards her own life in that over and over again her mom “reads” to Jeanette how her life is supposed to be lived, but never is Jeanette allowed to read her own story (in this case, her life). Finding out that her own mother lied to her every time she read the book is more detrimental to Jeanette than most children, in my opinion, because she always viewed her mother as this “ultimate” figure that could do no wrong. Jeanette, although she tries to deny it, now has to write her OWN ending to her OWN story and not allow her mother to manipulate her life. She also compares this experience to the day she found her adoption papers. Another traumatic experience for Jeanette who now feels like her own story is a lie and now feels lost. Jeanette falls into a pit of denial when she says “I have never since played cards, and I have never since read Jane Eyre”. Rather than taking on the situation head on and using this opportunity to write her own story, these two experiences were so traumatic she almost doesn’t know how to approach it and therefore pretends like nothing has happened. This passage is important because it’s the first time Jeanette is realizing that maybe her life can’t be controlled by her mom and maybe it’s time for her to rewrite her story, her own way.

Interesting analysis. I’d like to focus on the earliest part of your description in discussing the usage of the word “gay” and how both Yeats and Winterson use it. I feel as if, specifically in the lines you’ve cited, “gay” is meant to shock the reader in the beginning by making the statement, essentially, that ‘gay people are strong.’ But after lingering on the text, I am curious about flipping the meaning to “strong people are gay”, thus assuming that gay means a sense of joy, and those who rebuild are both gay in the sense that they are part of the LGBTQ+ community but also gay in the sense that they are happy and proud of the accomplishments of said community. I may be wrong, I just felt as if the terms holds two meanings.

Read through terms:

1. Locate terms you have not encountered before or terms that surprise, interest, or confuse you.
2. Connect one of our terms to something in one of our texts, or in one of the videos you watched.

Then:

Locate a passage in our novel that you found interesting, revealing, or strange.  Begin to ask questions about they passage based on close reading (what repeats? are there binaries? clusters? Take a stab as a group– what do you think it means?

Write your passage on the board (or an excerpt). Include page #s.

“That was a bad example but I knew what she meant. It meant that to create was a fundament, to appreciate, a supplement. Once created, the creature was separate from the creator, and needed no seconding to fully exist. “(Winterson, p.46).
“I don’t know if it’s up your street, it tells you how to build a perfect person, it’s all about this man who does it, but it’s not food if you ain’t got the equipment” (Winterson, 67).”

The ideas of perfection and separation are major themes in Jeanette Winnterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. In the chapter entitled Exodus, Elsie tells Jeanette that “once created, the creature was separate from the creator, and needed no seconding to fully exist.” This line strikes me as a perfect description of Jeanette’s character. Jeanette is separate from almost everything in her life. She’s adopted, making her physically separated her biological mother. She also expresses doubts about her mother during several point in the novel, saying that “people didn’t understand the way she thought; neither did I, but I loved her because she always knew exactly why things happened” (43). She’s isolated at school, seen as something of a ‘religious fanatic’ which leads to abuse from both the students and the teachers, but after her temporary hearing loss, realizes that her church sometimes gets things wrong. In short, Jeanette has been shaped by all these factors in her life, but is completely separate from all of them and does not need their validation to continue to exist.
When I was reading the chapter Leviticus, I was struck by the line towards the end of the story about the prince searching for the perfect woman to marry: “I don’t know if it’s up your street, it tells you how to build a perfect person, it’s all about this man who does it, but it’s not food if you ain’t got the equipment” (Winterson, 67). In the same chapter, Jeanette talks about how she was enraptured by a sermon about being perfect. The story referenced in the quote is the story of Frankenstein and his monster. This implies that a person created solely to be perfect is predisposed to become a monster. I think this is included as a warning to Jeanette. Frankenstein’s monster was created to be a perfect human, but once released from his creator, he becomes a murderous monster, disgusted with his creator and with his situation. Jeanette is becoming separated from her creators and she may soon find herself changing from perfect to ‘monstrous’.

I found the beginning of the “Leviticus” chapter in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit to be a fascinating account of the struggle between Heathens (those who do not believe in a major religion) and those who follow the “Word” of God. In this particular passage, we see a struggle between two neighbors play out on a Sunday, during which the neighbors are “fornicating” loudly, “On a Sunday”, no less (Winterson, 54). Then, in response, they run to the piano and begin playing hymns from the Redemption Hymnal, provoking an aggressive response from the Heathens next door:

“The hymn had a rousing chorus that moved my mother to such an extent that she departed entirely from the notation of the Redemption Hymnal, and instead wrought her own huge chords that sounded the length of the piano. No note was exempt. By the time we got to verse 3, Next Door had started to bang on the wall.”

I find a few things significant from this particular passage. It could be said that with her “depart[ing] entirely” from what is written in the Hymnal, she is committing a violation of the strict Word of God, by straying away from what is written. In a way, she is committing sin just like the neighbors next door. What is more likely is that she is interpreting the Word in her own way by playing the music loudly in retaliation for the sins that occurred next door.

Another eye-catching feature of this passage is the capitalization of the words “Next Door”. Throughout the passage, Winterson capitalizes certain words such as “Word”, “World Service”, “Heathen”, “Deuteronomy”. In reference to and contextualized with the Bible, these words are meant to be capitalized. However, the capitalization of the enemy “Next Door” suggests that not only are they the enemy, getting in the way of this family’s Sunday, but are satanic and evil in doing so. This is what I would call the process of “Satanization” – the Heathens “Next Door” are committing sins so horrible that they are literally becoming Satan – which is just disguised as “Next Door”. “Satan” is always capitalized in the Bible, just as God is.

What constitutes a problem is not the thing, or the environment where we find the thing, but the conjunction of the two;  (45)

This line stood out to me in particular because of the way it relates to our discussion of identity and queer theory.  In context, she’s speaking in terms of her sampler and how it makes more sense in Elsie’s house than in her sewing class.  However, I think that this concept is really interesting when applied to the idea of identity.  Take for instance a lesbian couple.  According to Winterson, there is nothing inherently wrong with the couple themselves.  Place them in a Greek Orthodox church, however, and issues arise.  However, if you take a devout Greek Orthodox and place him in a lesbian dive bar in the West Village and issues are bound to arise there too.  Perhaps then it is environment that colors our perception of good and bad, right and wrong.  If something can be right in one context and wrong in another, is there such thing as something that is inherently, at its core, good?  And for that matter, can something be inherently, at its core, bad?  This might be a stretch, but this then leads me to explore the concept of gender.  I think that Winterson’s words here can be used to argue that everything, not just goodness and badness, is contextual and situational.  Therefore, gender, sexuality, and everything else that we as a society have forced into black and white boxes could be argued to be entirely situational, rather than inherent.

 

“She recognised things according to expectation and environment. If you were in a particular place, you expected to see particular things” (Winterson, 45).

In this part of the passage, it is evident that the author repeats the words “expectation” in order to convey a deeper meaning about society. It is evident in the passage already that Jeanette is not what society “expects”. In this particular moment, she is turning in needlework which her teacher does not accept because it is against expectations. Needlework, from the perspective of a close-minded person bred through society, is supposed to be colorful, with a happy motto and done with the love of a woman. Jeanette puts her own perspective on things and is bashed because it is against what is “expected” at this moment. She specifically places this moment in the novel to criticize society’s narrow thinking in that just because someone is revealing them true selves because it is not within the guidelines of societal standards, it is somehow wrong. It is evident that this theme continues throughout the novel because as a Christian raised woman in a small town, Jeanette would be “expected” to spread the Christian faith and follow the rules along with her religion. As it turns out, Jeanette is completely opposite of the preplanned life set up for her since the beginning of her life. This may ultimately lead to feelings of shame and detachment from the world because society fails to consider the variety of personalities and characteristics people possess. There is no room for difference so when it is revealed, no one wants to accept it and learn from it.

Jeanette Winterson, young and naive grew up with teachings of the bible pumping through her veins. As her Mother taught her, their lives revolved around the Lord, everything that happens is of the Lord’s doing and the Lord was never wrong. Jeanette’s Mother made it a point to teach her daughter about the The Bible inside and out. Jeanette was trained to be a loyal member of the church but, what if this training clouded her judgement rather than helping her find her way to blissful salvation?
Jeanette has a wall built between her and reality. It is clear in the novel when the author states, “I learnt that it rains when clouds collide with a high building, like a steeple, or a cathedral; the impact punctures them, and everybody underneath gets wet. This was why, in the old days, when the only tall buildings were holy, people used to say cleanliness is next to godliness. The more godly your town, the more high buildings you’d have, and the more rain you’d get.” (Winterson 15)
It is obvious to anyone who has faith in the sciences that the occurrence of rain is far more complex than the collision of cloud and tall building. Though the idea that this is so is kind of cute in a fairytale sort of way, it is simply not so. As a young child, Jeanette is naive because she knows nothing about the world outside the church.
Though we haven’t reached the point in the story where Jeanette comes out, it can be assumed, with such a strict loyalty to the Lord, that revealing her sexuality was an incredibly difficult thing to do. In the novel, when discussing two unmarried women who ran a shop together, Jeanette heard her Mother say, “they dealt in unnatural passions” (7). The term “unnatural” has synonyms such as outrageous, bizarre and preposterous, creating a negative stigma around the word thus, creating a negative stigma around women loving women. Being taught that being lesbian is unnatural at a young age can certainly make it difficult to accept your sexuality.

‘All things fall and are built again

And those that build them again are gay’ (30).

I found it rather interesting that the author chose this section or rather these two lines from “Lapis Lazuli” by William Butler Yeats to include in this novel. Although, this quote is not directly from Winterson herself, I found that these lines directly related to the story. My interpretation of these lines in the context of this novel is that the “things” that have fallen represent the LGBTQ community. These members fall because of the ridicule, disrespect, and hate that they receive from society.   For example, as we saw in the “It Gets Better” videos there were several common similarities in the different coming out stories. These people were all made fun of, judged, and unhappy. This was their “fall,” however, they “built themselves again” by experiencing these common aspects essential to “Coming Out Narratives,” like the ones we had discussed in class. For example in these narratives they go through steps such as re-introducing themselves, realizing that they were different, and coming out. I know that William Butler Yeats intended to have the meaning of gay as happiness, but in this context I think that Winterson wants the reader to see that those who must “build themselves again” or transform themselves are members of the LGBTQ community. Looking at the greater scheme of the novel as a whole, I believe Winterson’s message is that members of the LGBTQ community do not have it easy, however, they can build themselves again and be happy.

Winterson includes these lines on page 30, so fairly early in the novel. I think this purpose is a way for the reader to foreshadow that the main character, Jeanette, over the course of the novel is going to struggle and fall, however, will find herself despite her strict family upbringing.   As I’ve been getting further into the novel, I have found support for my conclusion. For example, Jeanette faces struggles in school. It is obvious that she is different from the other students and misunderstood by her teacher. Mrs. Virtue criticizes her artwork because she only used 3 colors while the rest of the class used 4. This shows her deviance from the “normal,” however; Jeanette tries to defend her artwork, which is a way of defending herself to the Mrs. Virtue.