This is a comparative essay, also written for class. I love this author, although the two books mentioned below are the only works of hers I've read as yet. Plagiarism is not an option. Do your own classwork. I've included my sources, but I have no idea if the sites are still up. Maybe I'll check... Un autre note: The essay contains references to homosexuality; it's pretty much the secondary topic. If you can't deal, don't read.
Winterson's Rogue Element
December 11, 1997
In both Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and The Passion, Jeanette Winterson explores how people react to having their peaceful lives interrupted by the appearance of a new love interest. The disruptive new lover in both the novels is female, and attracts the interest of a female who is already in a union of some kind. In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette and her mother's relationship is strained by Jeanette's affection for a new member of their church, while in The Passion, the principle character of Villanelle is the new lover. These relationships effect Jeanette and Villanelle's later affiliations profoundly.
In The Passion and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the appearance of new love interests disrupts the peaceful existence of the principle characters. Winterson refers to these disruptive individuals as a "rogue element", an experiment in human's reactions to a new development in once calm and ordered lives. She says, "I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations" ("Rogue Element" interview, 1997). In both books, this rogue element is a female lover of a female in an established relationship, and the stressful situation is the characters, attempts to balance both unions. Melanie, Jeanette's first girlfriend in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, unintentionally causes Jeanette's mother to reject her. Villanelle in The Passion has an affair with a married woman, whose husband is rarely home, but still seems to care for his wife. The two women and the families they interrupt are a theme in Winterson's books. "Always in my books I like to throw that rogue element into a stable situation and then see what happens" ("Rogue Element" interview, 1997). She favors lesbian relationships in her writing. She can draw on her own life for these alliances, because she is homosexual. This theme is the only place where her sexuality has much impact, except in the semi-autobiographical Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which depends a lot on her past experiences.
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is loosely based on Winterson's personal experience with revealing her preference for her own sex to her extremely religious family. In the novel, the character of Jeanette falls in love with a new convert to the family's church. Jeanette and Melanie sneak behind their family's backs, under the pretense of being merely friends. Eventually, Jeanette tells her mother everything. "My mother had been very quiet, nodding her head from time to time, so that I thought she understood some of it" (102, OANTOF). At the time, her mother says nothing about what Jeanette tells her; that night she visits Mrs. White, a fellow church member. The next day, at Easter services, the pastor confronts the two girls, says they are possessed by the Devil and must confess so they can be cleansed of their evil. Mrs. White and Jeanette's mother told him prior to the service, perhaps the night before. Although Melanie confesses there in church, Jeanette refuses to admit they did anything wrong. To isolate her from Jeanette, Melanie is sent to Halifax, and Jeanette is forced to stay home when she gets sick. Her mother believes this illness is God's way of cleansing Jeanette's soul of evil thoughts and desires. "Certainly it was the belief of the Faithful that God was cleansing me of all my demons" (112, OANTOF). The whole congregation thought the same as the mother, that Jeanette was cleansed of her desire for female partners. Jeanette resumes teaching her Bible studies course, but is eventually kicked out of church and her mother's house because she has another relationship with a woman. Winterson went through similar circumstances when her religious organization found that she was a lesbian. "She and the congregation become estranged when her 'unnatural attraction' to women became noticed" (Lumbert, 1995). She drew on her experiences to create a situation of security for the character of Jeanette, then destroyed the security in a fashion similar to her own. Jeanette and her mother were settled in their relationship as parent and child, with Jeanette listening to her mother, following her instructions, and learning what her mother wanted her to know. As Jeanette grows older, she becomes involved with Melanie. She never kept things from her mother and tells her the truth of their friendship. Thus, Melanie is the rogue element which forces the parent and child apart. The main character of Jeanette precipitates the events that drive her from her home and family, but Melanie is the catalyst that inspires her to do so.
Villanelle, the protagonist of the Passion, is Winterson's surprise feature in the marriage of a Venetian woman and her rich, and often absent, husband. The woman meets Villanelle by chance. She goes to the Casino one night and gambles on a game of cards. Villanelle, dressed as a young man, runs this booth every night, but rarely allows anyone to win by drawing the Queen of Spades. The woman, who is never given a name, draws this card, and buys the best bottle of French champagne for herself and the casino worker. Villanelle falls in love with the woman that night. "Only for a second she touched me and then she was gone and I was left with my heart smashing at my chest and three-fourths of a bottle of the best champagne" (59, The Passion). She spends many days and nights wondering about the woman, until she runs into her again. They spend some nights together because the woman's husband is on a business trip; he collects and sells rare books and other items, and goes to retrieve them from exotic places himself. Villanelle is the most unsettled by this affair: the husband never seems to find out, the woman still acts the same towards her spouse, but Villanelle has never really loved before. She enjoys her time of passion with the lady, but knows it must end. She eventually marries a meat seller, who sells her to the French army as a prostitute. She still loves the woman, and quite literally left her heart with her. "It was a game of chance I entered into and my heart was the wager" (62, The Passion). She has her later paramour, Henri, retrieve it from the lady's house while she and her husband are away. Villanelle envies the woman's security in having a husband and a home. "They did not live in the fiery furnace she and I inhabited, but they had a calm and a way that put a knife in my heart" (75, The Passion). She spies on them at home one day, and realizes they have a quiet, enduring love that she and the woman can not have, despite their passionate fling. This disturbs her; she was never upset by a lover so much before. Villanelle is the one in this union who is the most unsettled after entering the woman's life as the rogue element. It barely effects the woman and her husband. This is the opposite result from Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.
These relationships effect Jeanette and Villanelle's later relationships greatly. Jeanette has another girlfriend, of sorts, after Melanie. Katy converted to her congregation, and seems to be attracted to Jeanette from the start. She arranges for the two of them to spend a night in a camper. "Though she still denies it I think she planned the caravan" (123, OANTOF). Jeanette does not feel the same about Katy as she had about Melanie, "She was my most uncomplicated love affair, and I loved her for it" (123, OANTOF). Jeanette was in love with Melanie, and Katy was just a relationship; one with feeling between the two, but not the near-obsession of Jeanette's first love. Villanelle becomes involved with a French soldier while the Grande Armee campaigns in Russia. Together with an Irish priest named Patrick, Henri and Villanelle desert the army and head to Venice. Patrick dies on the way, but the other two make it to Villanelle's home city. Henri loves her; the woman still has Villanelle's heart, so she could not love him back. She persuades Henri to steal back her heart from the lady, and he does, but she still does not love him. "He touches my heart, but he does not send it shattering through my body" (146, The Passion). She says repeatedly that he is her brother, meaning she can not, and fears, to love anyone yet, especially him, because the woman had her heart for so long. Past relationships effect present and future personal interactions, particularly when the past one was extremely influential in a person's life.
Jeanette Winterson, in writing OANTOF and The Passion, uses the introduction of what she calls a "rogue element" to show how people interact with each other, and how surprise effects formerly ordered lives. The rogue element in both these pieces is a female lover, and draws on Winterson's experiences with people who know she is homosexual. The connections disrupted by this element, be they familial, spousal or not, are permanently effected by this circumstance, as are future relationships. Winterson has made her "rogue element" into a recurring theme in her works. She handled it well from her first published book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and I am not the only person who believes so, judging by the number of awards she has received. Jeanette Winterson is a master of illustrating human interactions through words, and explores interesting new developments in them through her novels.
WORKS CITED
Lumbert, Perrin, "Jeanette Winterson": A Different Light Bookstore, 1995 http://www.adldooks.com/wntrsn.html
Winterson, Jeanette, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit: Atlantic Monthly Press, New York NY 1987, original edition Pandora Press, London 1985
Winterson, Jeanette, "Rogue Element: the Salon Interview": Salon Magazine http://www.salonmagazine.com/april97/winterson970428.html
Winterson, Jeanette, The Passion: Grove Press, New York 1988, original edition Bloomsbury Publishing ltd. 1987