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Oranges Are Not The Only Fruits Essay

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Oranges are Not the Only Fruits by Jeanette Winterson seems like an experimental novel which Winterson provides an ‘autobiographical account of the struggle for self-identification and self-recovery’ ( Botescu Sireteanu 2007:78). In this essay working class identity and religiosity will be explored. Can we identify a person by their working class or their religion? Throughout the novel class, identity and religiosity has been explored in a variety of ways. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit combines the experience of discovering one’s sexuality with the struggle to build a personal identity.
In Winterson novel you get a vibe that the novel is represents a middle- working class family, because Winterson belongs to a Christian religious class. ‘Jeanette’s adoption confirms the sense of middle- class, heterosexual normativity that Jeanette’s mother originally sought to establish through her youthful conversion to evangelical Christianity’ (Margot Gayle Backus, 2004, pg136). As Jeannette has grown up and been raised to be preacher and missionary of the intense Christianity Jeanette rebels against the religious/male-controlled principles that limit her in finding her working class identity (her sexuality). There is a great connection between Jeanette finding her working class identity and religiosity as these both clash with Jeanette finding her sexuality.
One of her influences is her mother. Even the adoption of Jeanette by her mother is related to religion, the images that her

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