Holier Than Thou: Melanie's husband has this attitude.In fact, the whole reason her mother chose him was because of how submissive and compliant he was. Her mother is quite the piece of work, and strikes Jeanette when the girl objects to her sending her birth mother away without even letting her see or talk to her. Girls' Love: With Melanie and later Katy.Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: Implied with the interactions between Jeanette and Mrs.In the miniseries this is averted: she almost never wears trousers and yet is attracted to the femme Melanie. Jeanette says she sees no similarity between herself and men - except that she always wears trousers. Broken Pedestal: Jeanette idolizes her mother when she's young, until her mother turns her back on Jeanette and her own beliefs regarding women having leadership roles in the church in order to find blame for and cure her lesbianism.Break the Haughty: Jeanette suspects her mother went through this, after a great deal of corruption and moral decay was revealed to be in the inner workings of the congregation (embezzlement, adultery, practicing voodoo on asylum patients), forcing it to split up.There were friends and there were enemies. She grows out of this somewhat at the end of the novel, when she lets Jeanette back into her life despite still not fully approving of her attraction to women. Black-and-White Insanity: Most of the congregation members, but her mother takes the cake.Biblical Motifs: Tons of them, including: casting the first stone, the walls of Jericho, Lot's wife, 'to the pure all things are pure' (Titus 1.15), the number seven, and the names of the chapters.Author Avatar: Quite obviously Jeanette.AM/FM Characterization: Jeannette's mother is shown to be a fan of Johnny Cash.Allegory Adventure: The fairy tales that pepper the text usually mirror Jeanette's life in some fashion.

Jewsberry who has possibly non-consensual and definitely underage sex with her. Adults Are Useless: The only adult who even tries to help the protagonist is Mrs.Adaptation Name Change: Jeanette is renamed Jessica in the TV adaptation, possibly to reduce the autobiographical elements of the story.

We see at least one scene of her mother striking her for sending her birth mother away, making her go pass fliers out in the rain, and finally disowning her after she comes out.

Abusive Parents: As Jeanette notes late into the novel, her mother never touches her except out of anger.

It was later adapted as a Mini Series by the BBC. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is Jeanette Winterson's somewhat autobiographical Coming of Age novel about a young adopted girl discovering she's a lesbian in a fanatically Christian community.

Oranges are not the only fruit pages