Themes (AQA A-Level English Literature A): Revision Notes
Themes
Introduction
Understanding themes is crucial for literary analysis, as they reveal the deeper meaning and universal truths that authors explore through their narratives.
Themes represent the fundamental and often universal ideas that a literary work explores. In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson examines several significant themes that challenge conventional thinking about truth, identity and the way we categorise the world. Understanding these themes is essential for analysing how Winterson constructs meaning throughout the novel.
All stories are made up
This central theme explores the nature of storytelling and questions whether any narrative can represent absolute truth. Winterson constructs a novel that presents multiple interwoven narratives, ultimately examining the very act of telling stories.
Questioning narrative truth
The novel blends legends and myths with the main character Jeanette's life experiences, deliberately challenging the reliability of the stories narrators present. Whilst the stories appear to follow Jeanette's life, they must be understood as fictional rather than strictly biographical. Winterson creates tension between what seems real and what is acknowledged as constructed narrative.
The blending of myth and reality is a key stylistic technique throughout the novel. Pay attention to how fairy tale sections mirror and comment on Jeanette's actual experiences.
Winterson's meta-commentary
Winterson herself has clarified that the novel should not be read as autobiography. She explicitly states:
'Oranges is the document, both true and false, which will have to serve for my life until I went to Oxford, and after that I daresay that whatever I tell you will be another document, one that is both true and false.'
This quote demonstrates the novel's central paradox - it presents itself as simultaneously authentic and fabricated.
Subjective reality
The novel emphasises that no stories or histories can ever be wholly true because subjective writers have composed them. Winterson challenges the notion of objective reality, arguing that whenever reality is represented through any art form, it must be questioned because it has been subjectively framed. This philosophical position suggests that truth is always filtered through individual perspective and interpretation.
Exam tip: When discussing this theme, consider how Winterson uses the fairy tale sections to illustrate the constructed nature of all narratives, including Jeanette's own story.
The mythic journey
Jeanette's narrative follows the traditional structure of a mythic quest, which provides the thematic framework for understanding her development throughout the novel.
Quest for self-discovery
The concept of a mythic journey frames Jeanette's personal narrative. Her birth and adoption are described using imagery that evokes the story of Christ, with Jeanette positioned as a special figure destined for an important mission. As she matures, however, her true quest becomes clearer - she must discover and accept her authentic self. This proves far from straightforward.
Conflict and departure
Jeanette's homosexual desires contradict the religious teachings she has believed throughout her life. To accept who she truly is, Jeanette must undertake both a physical journey and spiritual exploration. She needs to leave her home environment and abandon her assumptions about how the world and her own identity are defined.
The departure from home is both literal and metaphorical - Jeanette must leave physically but also abandon the mental frameworks that have confined her understanding of herself.
Mythic framework
Winterson employs standard techniques from mythic storytelling for Jeanette's adventure. The novel incorporates other mythic characters, such as Sir Perceval, positioning Jeanette's story within the mythic realm. This literary technique elevates her personal struggle to a universal level, suggesting her journey represents a timeless human experience.
Continuing mission
Although Jeanette's adventure requires her to step outside the normative heterosexual sphere, her quest follows conventional narrative patterns. Significantly, even after Jeanette acknowledges she is a lesbian by the novel's conclusion, her quest continues. She remains able to combat evil in the world, fulfilling the mission her mother originally intended for her, though in an unexpected form.
Key point: The mythic journey structure demonstrates that Jeanette's quest for self-acceptance follows universal patterns of heroic narratives, validating her experience despite it challenging social norms.
The world is not made of binary oppositions
A dominant theme throughout the novel concerns the conflict between binary thinking and the more complex reality of human experience.
Binary worldview
The novel presents the fundamental conflict between binary categories. Jeanette's mother can only perceive the world through strict divisions - good or evil, friend or foe. This reductive worldview cannot accommodate the complexity of real human experience and identity.
Illustrating Binary Thinking:
Jeanette's mother's worldview operates on simple either/or categories:
- Good or Evil
- Saved or Damned
- Friend or Enemy
- Natural or Unnatural
This rigid framework leaves no room for nuance, complexity, or experiences that fall outside these predetermined categories.
Challenging sexual binaries
Jeanette's homosexuality positions her outside the traditional binary framework by demonstrating that she is neither wholly good nor wholly evil. Her sexuality defies the simple categories her religious community uses to organise the world. This challenges the reader to recognise that human identity exists on a spectrum rather than in fixed categories.
Gender as social construction
Jeanette's lesbianism also challenges the binary gender roles that traditionally structure society. Winterson illustrates the fluid nature of gender by depicting how gender roles shift within the mythical sections of the novel. Drawing on postmodern feminist theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Monique Wittig, Winterson suggests that gender is socially constructed rather than biologically inherent.
Postmodern feminists like Kristeva and Wittig argue that gender categories are created and maintained by social institutions and cultural practices, not by biology. This challenges the idea that traditional gender roles are 'natural' or inevitable.
Limitations of binary systems
The novel demonstrates that constructing the world through binary systems creates limitations and exclusions. These rigid structures prevent recognition of people and stories that exist outside narrow definitions. By refusing to view the world as a strict duality, the novel proposes that greater multiplicity can be acknowledged. People cannot be reduced to simply black and white categories, but instead exist across many shades in between.
Analysis point: When examining this theme, consider how the novel's structure itself breaks down binaries by mixing realistic narrative with fairy tale, autobiography with fiction, and sacred with profane.
Remember!
- The novel questions whether any story can represent absolute truth, presenting all narratives as both true and false simultaneously
- Jeanette's journey follows the traditional mythic quest structure, but subverts it by making self-acceptance and homosexuality central to the hero's mission
- Binary thinking is challenged throughout the novel, particularly the binaries of good/evil and traditional gender roles
- Winterson argues that gender is socially constructed rather than biologically determined, drawing on postmodern feminist theory
- The theme of storytelling is meta-fictional - the novel examines its own nature as a constructed narrative whilst telling Jeanette's story