Oranges are Not the only Fruit

Jeanette Winterson’s first novel, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit , is one of those success stories of which feminists feel proud. From its small-scale beginnings as a risky undertaking by the newly formed Pandora Press in 1985, through the winning of the Whitbread Prize for a First Novel later the same year, to its much lauded adaptation for BBC television by Winterson herself in January 1990, the work’s reputation, like that of its author, has grown and prospered. Winterson itself is now unquestionably treated as a ‘serious’ author, highly praised by other ‘serious’ authors such as Gore Vidal and Muriel Spark; yet she is also a popular success, appearing on Clive James’s chat show on TV and being sympathetically profiled in the popular press. The ‘serious’ side of the success story, her qualification as a representative of high culture, is largely dependent on her literary output: Oranges, and, more especially, her third novel, The Passion; her popular success and high media exposure can be dated to the TV adaptation of Oranges. That an author who is a lesbian and a feminist should be so successful in such contrasting contexts is seen as something to celebrate by other lesbians and feminists. Whatever misgivings may be felt about the traps and pitfalls of the mainstream, the sight of ‘one of us’ being given so much approval by the pillars of the establishment, whence usually comes opprobium, is a source of enormous pleasure.