SOURCE: Doan, Laura. “Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Postmodern.” In The Lesbian Postmodern, edited by Laura Doan, pp. 137–55. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Doan examines the intersection and compatibility of Winterson's lesbian feminist politics and postmodern literary techniques in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion, and Sexing the Cherry.

In Jeanette Winterson's witty and exuberant autobiographical first novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) the protagonist Jeanette, an adolescent who decrees confidently that heterosexuality is beastly, confusing, and utterly unappealing, ponders why her passionate involvement with members of her own sex causes so much disruption in her family and church: “It all seemed to hinge around the fact that I loved the wrong sort of people. Right sort of people in every respect except this one; romantic love for another woman was a sin” (127). The problem, as Jeanette sees it, stems not from...