Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit Essay

Food and consumption are employed as symbols through which diverse religious, sexual and societal thematic concerns are presented throughout western literature. Winterson presents consumables as microcosmic aspects of Jeanette’s internal struggle in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) concerning her religious and sexual attitudes within her post-modern society. As an extended metaphor, oranges are at the epicentre of Louie’s fundamentalist congregation as representations of the strictly heteronormative society that it enforces, an oppressive society not too far removed from that of Rossetti and Williams’. Similarly, in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Rossetti’s poetry - particularly Goblin Market (1862) - consumption primarily emulates temptation and lust (having both biblical and societal connotations) as destructive and gluttonous forces in their respective societies Williams in post-war America and Rossetti in Victorian England). Therefore, while the use of food as a motif is clear in all three works to varying degrees, each writer uses it to present
Louie is substituted by the oranges which in turn are symbols of fundamentalist oppression throughout the novel. For example in this significant quotation, ‘she sent my father, usually with a letter and a couple of oranges’ , Winterson employs what first appears to be an edgeless, trivial statement to convey the meaning of oranges and their consumption in the novel as a whole. It can be argued that the oranges emulate Jeanette’s distance from her mother both physically and ideologically as they are often ‘sent’ 1 to Jeanette as though her mother is a disconnected patron seeking to impose herself on her daughter even from afar using her husband, a letter, and some oranges as her