The Mother Daughter Relationship in Oranges Are not the Only Fruit

She told Jeannette that one should never hate a person no matter what. This quote shows that Jeanette’s mom deeply values people in general. She believes that everyone has some good in them. This is importantly thematically as well, as it is saying that one should never hate a person for any reason, there is always some good within everyone, even those you feud with.

Angela McEwan-Alvarado was born in Los Angeles and has lived in many locations in the United States, as well as Mexico and Central America. She obtained her master’s degree at UC Irvine and since then has worked as an editor of educative materials and a translator. The story “Oranges” was the result of an exercise for a writer’s workshop in which the author managed to mix images and experiences accumulated throughout her life.

Her dad carried her away from the hospital without payment, and then her mom permitted her to cook again, moreover she said, “ Getting right back into the saddle” ( Glass Castle 47). Jeanette was not angry at such young age and soon the family had to pack their belongings into bags and “do the skedaddle” as her parents always said. The parents were fleeing from bill collectors. Although Jeanette's father was an alcoholic, he could get work almost anywhere, often in small towns. The family was moving because of these things, she never complained when they did not have enough food. Jeanette always forgave her parents, she understood what they were going through.

One of the most important theme in The Glass Castle is forgiveness. Jeannette and her brother and sisters spend their whole lives forgiving their parents for their irresponsibilities. They still love them and welcome them into their hearts even though Rex and Rose Mary didn't deserve it. By forgiving them, she feels less angry and her attitude as a whole is much more positive. When she is three years old, she burns herself cooking and her mother doesn't take care of her. After being in the hospital for 6 days, she let her cook again and says “Good for you, you have got to get right back in the saddle (15). ” Another example of forgiveness, is when she is trying to learns how to swim and her dad drops her in the water making her almost drown. She thinks he did this so she can learn, so she forgives him. Jeanette says, “I figured he must be right, there was no other way to explain it(66).” This means that she thought he didn't have an intention to harm her, but he tried to make her learn. At the end of the story, she meets her father for the last time and forgives him for all the bad things that had happened in her life and all the chaos. Although all of these bad things happened to her and her brother and sister because of him, she says she knew he loved her like no one else ever had. Jeanette said she forgives him for “all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he [has] created in [her life].” On the other hand though, she says, “I could not imagine what my life would be like- without him in it. As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had(279).” This means that she knew that he made all those mistakes throughout his life, but she still found a way to forgive him and look on the brighter side of things.

Her Mother seemed to be more put together than her father at times, even getting a job at one point helping the family out. Though her mother was a hedonist and did not contain the motherly love and sacrifice for her kids, this job helped Jeanette’s future. She helped grade papers which increased her knowledge of the outside world and “...the world was making a little more sense” as she read the papers and projects of her mother’s students (Walls 205). Her parents had such an opposition to the outside world that she hadn’t gotten every aspect of

She has no sympathy that her daughter was just sexually assaulted by a family member, even though about 60% of children who are sexually abused are abused by the people the family trusts (“Darkness to Light End Child Sexual Abuse”). Rex and Rose Mary tell Jeanette that she will be fine and that she can handle herself. They are too busy trying to pretend that their financial situation is okay to truly care about Jeannette being sexually assaulted.

This leads to Jeanette getting terribly burned and scared for the rest of her life.

As readers we can’t see that Jeanette’s mother actually loves her daughter. Instead we see her turn away and ignore Jeanette when she becomes deaf. That is a prime example of her hypocrisy because someone that was a servant of God would pay more attention to someone in need and sick rather than ignore him or her because it doesn't fit her plan in life. While you may think that this would completely break a person, Jeanette continues to be a kind and companionate person despite her childhood with the woman she calls her mother. In the beginning of Go Tell in on the Mountain, Gabriel is only described by John who feels that he can’t do anything right to please his father all the while he is struggling to discover his true identity.

Jean didn't know this at the beginning of the story but it soon became a main focal point towards the end. She starts off with visiting her dad, she was surprised when her long life friend Henry picks her up instead of her father. See henry secretly hopes Jean will marry him, but I really think

She does not bow down to the white mayor's wife, she is as abrupt and bad tempered with her as she is with Squeak. Jeanette fights to invent stories that help to describe her continuing painful circumstances. In one allegorical section Jeanette enters the "city of last chances. " She has already gone so far in pursuing her sexuality, and she ends up in the "final disappointment. " She can not go back and has to choose.

Throughout the book, many attempts are made by Jeanette's mother to make Jeanette suppress her feelings and sexual orientation. When Mother finds out that Jeanette is a lesbian, she kicks her out of the house, saying, "You'll have to leave, I'm not havin' demons here."(Page 136). That incident, however, happens only after Mother and the Pastor try many times to make Jeanette repent and renounce her sexual feelings toward women, including trying to make her feel guilty and shameful, sending away her sexual partners, and locking her in a room for thirty-six without food or light.

“Children obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. ‘Honor your father and mother.’ This is the first commandment with a promise: If you honor your father and mother, ‘things will go well for you and you will have a long life on earth,’” (Ephesians ????). Jeanette is raised by this verse found in Ephesians. Her mother with a questionable past has adopted Jeanette since she is completely against the idea of sex although she is married. Determined that Jean is destined to become a missionary, her mother is very protective and shields her from the “enemies” of the world: The Devil, “Next Door”, sex, and slugs (Winterson 3). Ever since entering the family, religion had a huge

Following the death of her father in 1904, Vanessa Bell uprooted herself and her three siblings, Thoby, Adrian and Virginia from their childhood home in Hyde Park to 46 Gordon Square in London’s Bloomsbury district. It was at 46 Gordon Square that a new way of life and art would begin for the young artist at the age of twenty-five. Describing Bell’s abandonment of their childhood home and her role as a Victorian “mistress of the house,” her sister Virginia wrote: “She had sold, she had burnt; she had sorted; she had torn up. Sometimes I believe she had actually to get men with hammers to batter down- so wedged into each other had the walls and the cabinets

Life to her is only black or white and never in between. Oranges are the only fruit and there will never be any other option. There is only one way to live life, and that is God’s way, etc. etc. Her act of offering Jeanette oranges also represents her forcing her ideas onto Jeanette and others. She calls school a “breeding ground” which Jeanette, as a child, agrees with.

Her father willingly caves to her mother’s will like Christians follow God’s will and women follow the patriarchy’s will. Each dominating factor is based on religious ideologies that are disseminated by religious education. In a religious society, people use religion to justify actions that subject the populace to servitude. If one were to question the power that commits society into classes of the ruled and the rulers, they would be dismissed as perverted, immoral agitators. Simply questioning the power structure will lead to the outcasting of an individual, analogous to what happened to Jeanette after her sexuality was revealed and she refused to give the church its due power by not repenting. She was cast out of the community and rejected by her mother; her church family; and, as she felt, her God. Jeanette’s mother can be read as a metaphor of the duality of religious ideologies and the hypocrisy and contradictions presented in the Christian Bible. These contradictions allow for many things to be justified by citing a verse of scripture while neglecting to mention another that counters it because societal pressure does not allow for the questioning of the accuracy of the scripture’s relevance or its interpretation. In other words, in religious societies, scripture is final and the only thing needed