Preview

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit Analysis

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1636 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit Analysis
Myth and Homosexuality in Jeanette Winterson’s
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Prof. Satyawan Suresh Mane
Assistant Professor in Communication Skills
Gharda Institute of Technology, Lavel, Ratnagiri
Mumbai University, Maharashtra

Abstract
The term ‘Lesbian feminism’ is a cultural movement which was most influential in 1980’s era. Though it was a part of the concept ‘Feminism’, the effect of it was something unique in North American and Western Europe society. It was emerged due to the result of the dissatisfaction with ‘second wave feminism’. It advocated that lesbianism is the only form of emancipated sexuality since it excludes men and rejects patriarchy. Many of the thinkers and activists like Rita Mae Brown, Mary Daly, Barbara Smith fought
…show more content…
The novel pictures the transition. From her childhood, Jeanette is an outcast and neglected child in school as she had a strong belief in God and her essays were nothing but the projects on biblical themes. She strongly advocates the homosexuality in a novel. Her mother herself is an example in front of her to present her views against patriarchal society. Her mother adopted Jeanette in a sexless manner. She had a different view and intention behind adopting Jeanette. Jeanette who believes in God and serves Him maintains the lesbian relationship. Milanie is Jeanette’s first love. Jeanette meets Melanie at a fish stand. Melanie is a compelling girl who works at a fish stall. Melanie is sweet and docile. Her simplicity attracts Jeanette. Melanie is not too smart so the once tells Jeanette that she got her name because her head resembled a melon. Melanie is presented in opposite to Jeanette’s character. Jeanette is a strong character but Melanie represents weak soul who refuses to follow her true love, desires unlike Jeanette. Melanie docility leads her to marry and have children. Jeanette frequently visits Melanie’s house for Bible study. As the two spend more time together, they start having a love affair. The feeling of homosexuality arises in the mind of Jeanette’s mind and is attracted towards

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    However, she says she felt” six stinging blows on the backs of her thighs, each accompanied by a whistle of air” (Walls 220). In the aftermath, she runs into a forest and makes two decisions. It was that “she has had her last whipping and that, like Lori, she was going to get out of Welch” (Walls 221). The negative situation was that the bond between Jeanette and her father shatters as Rex decides to take his wife’s side. He punishes Jeanette, but at the loss of the fragile bond between them. This results in Jeanette finally breaking out of the haze her father had on her, making her ponder her life choices. That means she decides to make the decision to move out of Welch with Lori. This was positive as it means Jeanette would finally move out of the one place that gave her troubles and away from her parents. She might move onto a new stage of her life which might lead to success. This shows that the presence of negative situations turned positive outcomes is frequent in the book, creating shifts in the book that allows the story to move along and shows how the actions of one girl and her family can turn something terrible into something…

    • 475 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the book, Jeannette starts with a scene of her on her way to an event, worried about being over-dressed and sees her mother going through a dumpster. She feels guilty but shamed and gloom as well and realized she was socially privileged and skipped the party to embrace her comfortable home that showed individual influence. Due to this incident, she suddenly starts reminiscing her childhood and how her parents choices affected her.…

    • 1237 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Hornibrook, D. C. (2009). Communication Skills Handout [class handout]. Albany, OR: Linn Benton Community College…

    • 45 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    TEWWG essay

    • 872 Words
    • 2 Pages

    From early on Janie is curious about the meaning of true love, but her Nanny puts a stop to all of her daydreams when she forces Janie to marry Logan Killicks when she finds Janie kissing Johnny Taylor. Janie goes into the marriage with an open mind hoping that she will fall in love with him but soon realizes that love isn’t something that you can force. “‘Cause you told me Ah must gointer love him, and, and Ah don’t. Maybe if somebody was to tell me how, Ah could do it.’”(Hurston 23). Even though Logan does not make her happy, Janie stays in this relationship to please her grandma. “What was she losing so much time for? A feeling of sudden newness and change came over her” (Hurston 32). From this marriage Janie learns about self-respect by leaving the unhappy relationship she was in. She goes into her next marriage feeling like a new person and hopes that Joe Starks will be the one.…

    • 872 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Along the same line, Cheryl Clarke, a lesbian poet, essayist and a black feminist activist, in her essay “Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance” (1981), she examines the lesbian identity as a new emerging strategy to fight the “male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, imperialist culture as an act of resistance” (128). Clarke draws the similarity between the oppression of the African Americans and women’s oppression arguing that lesbians share the same experience of oppression as black people. So, she urges them to decolonize themselves from the “slave-master’s imperialism” (128) and “reverse and transform predatory heterosexuality” (134). She insists on the idea that “lesbianism is a recognition, an awakening, a reawakening…

    • 247 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This report was commissioned by the CEO and will help identify the communication problems at Mirror Image, particularly between factory…

    • 2940 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    This is a divisive strategy that aims to produce a consumable queer, fit for a mainstream audience. Subsequently, this strategy risks straight culture subsuming both lesbians and the queer community (Moody 2011). To subsume lesbian and queer culture would erode the common political identity that allows for community organization against heterosexism. Like bell hooks (1992) contends, “Communities of resistance are replaced by communities of consumption” (33). Effectively, the apolitical representation of lesbianism obliterates the movement’s historical allegiance to working class culture, butches, interracial socializing and feminism (Moody 2011). Both productions exemplify this shift from queer sexuality to homonomative-domestic lesbian, although The Kids Are All Right epitomizes this because it fails to acknowledge the oppressive culture and diverse identities. Homonormative representations normalized the broader lesbian community and foster…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Craig Rimmerman

    • 290 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This article serves as an appropriate outline to some phases in the history of the US lesbian and gay political history. Also, this shows concepts which are necessary to the evolution of any political movement, but displays these concepts through the lesbian and gay movements. The article challenged me to understand the weaknesses and strengths of the movements, and discover why some worked and why some did not.…

    • 290 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bad Feminist Analysis

    • 1125 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Feminism is a fight for equality and should help everyone realize that equality needs to be shared on a global spectrum. The push for feminism has been widely spread across North America but it needs to be brought into other countries as well. Gay says, “What about other women of color? For Hispanic and Latina women, Indian women, Middle Eastern women, Asian women, their absence in popular culture is even more pronounced, their need for relief just as palpable and desperate” (Gay 268). Feminism is more than just local and the women struggling across the world need to be recognized too. Aside from women solely, there needs to be support for those of every gender specification, sexual orientation, age, race, and so on. Gay reminds the readers to never bystand and take a stand against wrongful discrimination, “As individuals, we may not be able to do much, but when we’re silent when someone uses the word ‘gay’ as an insult, we are falling short. When we don’t vote to support equal marriage rights for all, we are falling short” (Gay 178). Even if the discrimination is not directly said to a gay person, using the term “gay” in a derogatory way is wrong and hurtful. She encourages her readers to divert that person, and others from using the wrongful term in the wrong context. Finally, she says that help is needed everywhere, “So many of us are reaching out, hoping someone out there will grab our hands and remind us we are not as…

    • 1125 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay On Liberal Feminism

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Liberal feminism may be classed as ‘inadequate’ compared to other approaches to feminism, however, in itself, liberal feminism is actually groundbreaking. In 1994 the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act made it illegal for a man to rape his wife. This revolution was attained easily by dismissing the word ‘unlawful’ from the statuary definition of rape as it appeared in the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976. Astonishingly, prior to this change there were acts of rape which could infact be legal, due to the law interpreting the meaning of marriage as a continual consent to sex, consensual or not. This law that has protected married men from committing crimes is what feminists label ‘the patriarchal legal system’. The law’s interpretation here created a view on marriage that: all husbands owned their wives, as if a piece of property. For example in the 1736 case of R v R Chief Justice Hale ruled that a husband cannot be guilty of raping his wife due to marital exemption and therefore…

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Inness, Sherrie A. "GI Joes in Barbie Land." The Lesbian Menace: Ideology, Identity, and the Representation of Lesbian Life. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 1997. 178-200. Print.…

    • 1450 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The mystery of MH370

    • 1691 Words
    • 6 Pages

    On 8 March 2014, a Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.41am and was due to arrive in Beijing at 6.30am. Nothing was unusual until it lost contact less than an hour after takeoff. The missing of MH370 plane is shocking and it has become the attention of the world. In Flight MH370, there were 153 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, 7 Indonesians, 6 Australians, 5 Indians, 4 French, 3 Americans, 2 each from New Zealand, Ukraine and Canada, one each from Russia, Taiwan, and Netherlands, and also two men, in which one confirmed as Iranian. He travelled under stolen Italian and Austrian passports.…

    • 1691 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    English as a language of instruction has quickly taken precedence in most of the universities and colleges around the world. What has also become common place is the interchange of students from country to country. The term “international students” has traditionally been attributed to students who matriculate in colleges and universities in the western world. The “international student” status is also commonly attributed to students whose native language is other than the English language. Anecdotal evidence exists as to the association between students’ English language proficiency and overall performance in specific courses.…

    • 2401 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Feminist and Lesbian Film

    • 2059 Words
    • 9 Pages

    The cycle of free expression followed by total persecution experienced by members of the homosexual community as a whole, before and post World War 2, was a symbolic and strengthening experience for Lesbian and Feminist film makers alike. It is now a time of freedom in Europe, where filmmakers are establishing future goals to educate and liberate Lesbianism/ Feminism through the art of film. To many of the women and men within these movements, it was a time where ideologies, of what was once filled with discrimination towards homosexuality and the rights of women, are in the past and the future provides growth in new ideologies for a generation of individualistic lifestyles. By researching these filmmakers, from the occupancy of Nazi Germany in 1931 to a more recent date of Sweden, 1998, one is captivated by a history of people who have fought for the freedom they now rightfully own. Thus Feminist and Gay Cinema has begun to take the world by storm.…

    • 2059 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Save as Many as You Ruin

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In the text Gerard is mentioned as the main character, Gerard is the type of person who is afraid to be like anyone else, and he tries to make his life unusual because he does not want to blend in. Gerard is described in the text as handsome and he has slept with lots of women, he has a special relationship with to different women, the one mother to their child, who is 8 years old and called Lucy, and the other women who he had an affair with. He adores both women, but he compares his need to have needs for another woman to the feeling especially men has when they are in a long relationship. Issy was the mother to Lucy and she left because she wanted to fulfil her dream of becoming an actress in Hollywood, but 4 years later she died in a pool committed suicide and she wrote a note with Gerard’s name on it as her next kin. Gerard is an emotional person who wants to treat the persons he loves well and in the text the reader are constantly reminded of her caring to Lucy his daughter. The writer did not intend to show the reader that Gerard is an extraordinary man, because Gerard’s professions or his abilities are not told through the text, but he illustrate Gerard as an normal man who might live an boring life, because even though he wants to be special, the writer did not show what he is good at, otherwise then loving Lucy.…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays