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The period from 1945 to the present has seen fundamental transformations in attitudes towards gender and sexuality. Literature has both reflected and driven these changes — challenging conventions, imagining alternatives, and giving voice to experiences that were previously silenced or stigmatised. This lesson examines two novels that are centrally concerned with gender, sexuality, and social change: Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) and Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road (1961).
| Decade | Key Developments |
|---|---|
| 1950s | Rigid gender roles; homosexuality criminalised; the "feminine mystique" (Betty Friedan's term for the idealisation of suburban domesticity) |
| 1960s | Sexual revolution; contraceptive pill; decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales (1967); second-wave feminism |
| 1970s | Women's liberation movement; Gay Liberation Front (1970); feminist literary criticism; consciousness-raising groups |
| 1980s | Section 28 (1988) — prohibited "promotion" of homosexuality; AIDS crisis; Thatcher's "Victorian values"; backlash against feminism |
| 1990s–2000s | Queer theory (Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, 1990); civil partnerships (2004); increased visibility of LGBTQ+ lives |
| 2010s–present | Marriage equality (2014); trans rights debates; #MeToo movement; ongoing contestation of gender norms |
Winterson grew up in Accrington, Lancashire, in an evangelical Pentecostal household. Oranges is a semi-autobiographical novel that draws on her experience of growing up as a lesbian within a fiercely religious community. It was published in 1985 — the same year as The Handmaid's Tale — at a moment when the political Right was reasserting "traditional values" and when Section 28 was approaching.
The novel's chapters are named after the first eight books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth). This structure is deeply ironic: Winterson uses the Bible's own organising framework to tell a story that challenges biblical authority over sexuality and identity.
Interspersed with the realistic narrative are fairy tales, myths, and allegorical episodes — stories of quests, transformations, and enchantments. These inset narratives:
Jeanette's mother — a dominating, charismatic figure — uses religion as a system of total control. The church community offers love and belonging, but only on condition of absolute conformity. When Jeanette's sexuality is discovered, she is subjected to an exorcism — a literal attempt to cast out what the community defines as demonic.
Key Quote: "She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies."
The mother's worldview is binary — good/evil, saved/damned, right/wrong. There is no space for ambiguity, complexity, or difference. The novel's formal structure (its multiple narratives, its fairy tales, its refusal of a single authoritative voice) is itself a rejection of this binary worldview.
Jeanette's lesbianism is presented not as a problem to be solved but as a natural and integral part of her identity. The novel refuses the narrative of "coming out" as crisis — instead, Jeanette's sexuality is shown as continuous with her other qualities: her intelligence, her independence, her imagination.
The community's response — exorcism, isolation, the demand that she "repent" — is presented as the aberration, not her sexuality. Winterson reverses the conventional moral framework: it is the community that is damaged, not the individual.
The novel is obsessed with stories — biblical stories, fairy tales, family myths, personal narratives. Jeanette's mother controls reality through storytelling: she rewrites history, invents enemies, and constructs a narrative in which she is always the heroine.
Jeanette's liberation involves claiming the right to tell her own story — in her own way, in her own voice. The novel's hybrid form (realism + fairy tale + myth) embodies this claim: there is more than one way to narrate experience, and no single narrative has a monopoly on truth.
A-Level Analysis: The title itself is a statement about narrative and truth. Oranges are not the only fruit — there are many kinds of fruit, many ways to live, many stories to tell. The mother's insistence on oranges (she gives Jeanette an orange whenever she is upset, as if oranges are the universal solution) represents the narrowness of a worldview that cannot accommodate difference.
The novel is not simply a rejection of religion. Jeanette's church community offers genuine warmth, purpose, and identity. The pain of her expulsion is real — she loses not just a belief system but a community, a family, a sense of belonging. The novel acknowledges that liberation from an oppressive community is also a loss.
| Technique | Effect |
|---|---|
| First-person narration | Creates intimacy and identification; the child's perspective renders the community's beliefs both vivid and strange |
| Inset fairy tales | Provide allegorical commentary; challenge univocal narrative authority; create a layered, hybrid text |
| Irony and humour | Winterson uses comedy to expose absurdity without diminishing pain. The mother is both terrifying and hilarious |
| Biblical structure | Using the Bible's own framework to tell a story that undermines biblical authority — deeply ironic |
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