oranges are not the only fruit

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: very clear on Winterson’s own perspective and opinion, conveyed through her own history as the protagonist and the structure of the novel. POST MODERNISM - fragmented, discontinuous structure, hybrids, experimenting, and subjective view of truth. Post modernism came about because of the first world war- left Britain broken and fragmented. The massive blood bath changed the mind-set of the country, thought about bigger questions, ideas about rejecting an overall authority.
The fragmented structure which is common of postmodern novels is celebrated, setting the protagonist and reader free from there being only one truth, “our escape from the claustrophobic embrace of fixed systems of belief.” (Peter Barry in ‘Beginning Theory: An introduction of Literary and Cultural Theory’)Oranges defies and blurs the boundaries between genres and the stereotypical view of women and the church. Similarly to metanarrative ideas, Jeanette accepts the church to be the truth although she finds that it “purports to explain and reassure, [but] are really illusions fostered in order to smother difference, opposition and plurality” (Barbara Johnson in ‘Revisiting Indian epics from a post-modernist and feminist perspective’) Jeanette learns to enjoy the fact that she is different, even though her society tries to abolish it. She explores her identity, using fantasy and mini narratives to find her reality. What she comes up with isn’t the truth, it is always shifting and changing, but it is her truth.
Through narratively juxtaposing reality (Jeanette’s history) with “fantastic” spaces, Winterson complicates the truths of each setting as Peggy Dunn Bailey argues, “Winterson demonstrates the ways in which self and reality are narrative constructs” Jeanette has several fantasy counterparts and the result is that Jeanette’s identity is ambiguous and unstable. It collapses the distinction between history and story, fact and fiction, personal and political,