Context: 1980s Britain, Religion & Sexuality
Winterson's Autobiographical Background
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit was published in 1985 and won the Whitbread Prize for a First Novel. Jeanette Winterson drew heavily on her own life: she was adopted by Pentecostal parents in Accrington, Lancashire, raised to be a missionary, and expelled from her church community when her relationships with women were discovered. However, Winterson has always insisted the novel is not autobiography: "It's not what happened, it's a story about what happened." This distinction matters for the exam because Winterson deliberately reshapes and mythologises her experience through fairy tales, biblical structure, and fantasy — the novel is about the act of storytelling as much as the events it describes.
The fictional Jeanette shares key experiences with Winterson — adopted, raised in a strict religious household in a northern English town, expelled for loving women — but the character is not a transparent self-portrait. Winterson uses fiction to transform personal pain into something universal: a story about what happens when identity conflicts with the community that shaped it.
The novel draws on Winterson's life but is not autobiography. Winterson reshapes her experience through fiction, fairy tales, and biblical structure. The distinction between life and story is a central theme — "It's not what happened, it's a story about what happened."
1980s Evangelical Christianity
The novel is set in a working-class northern English town dominated by a Pentecostal church community. Pentecostalism emphasises personal conversion, literal interpretation of the Bible, speaking in tongues, and the active presence of the Holy Spirit. The church in the novel is not a gentle, moderate institution — it is fervent, demanding, and all-consuming. Jeanette's mother has divided the world into "friends" and "enemies", with anyone outside the church belonging to the latter category.
Winterson presents the church as simultaneously a source of belonging and a mechanism of control. For the young Jeanette, the church provides identity, community, purpose, and love. She is valued as a preacher and seen as destined for missionary work. But this belonging comes at a cost: total conformity. The church demands that its members think, feel, and behave in prescribed ways. When Jeanette's sexuality diverges from the church's teaching, the same community that nurtured her turns on her with devastating force.
Section 28 and 1980s Attitudes to Homosexuality
The novel was published in 1985, three years before Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988), which prohibited local authorities from "promoting" homosexuality. While Section 28 came after the novel's publication, it reflects the climate in which Winterson wrote. In 1980s Britain, homosexuality was legal but socially stigmatised. The AIDS crisis (from 1981) had intensified prejudice, with tabloid newspapers labelling AIDS a "gay plague." Within evangelical communities, homosexuality was treated as a sin requiring repentance or — as the novel depicts — exorcism.
Winterson's novel was radical for its time because it presented a young woman's same-sex relationships not as shameful or tragic but as natural expressions of love and identity. Jeanette does not apologise for who she is. The novel's quiet insistence that there is nothing wrong with Jeanette — that the fault lies with those who try to change her — was a powerful statement in the hostile climate of the 1980s.
The novel is set in a working-class community in northern England — a world of terraced houses, factory work, and limited horizons. Winterson uses this setting to show how class intersects with religion and sexuality. The church provides the community with structure, meaning, and social connection in the absence of material wealth. When Jeanette is expelled, she loses not just her faith but her entire social network. Winterson also explores gender: the mother is the dominant figure in the household (the father is barely present), and the church gives women like the mother a platform for authority that they would not have in secular society. This makes the mother's betrayal of Jeanette more complex — the church empowers the mother even as it oppresses her daughter.
The novel was published in 1985, during a period of intense hostility towards LGBTQ+ people in Britain. Section 28 (1988) would soon prohibit 'promoting' homosexuality. Winterson's insistence that Jeanette's sexuality is natural and valid was a politically radical act.
Your Prose Question: What You Need to Know
In the post-1914 prose section of your second literature exam, you answer ONE question worth 40 marks. An extract from the novel is printed on the paper, and the question is built on it. It rewards AO1 (an informed personal response backed by evidence), AO2 (language, form and structure) and AO4, which is the accuracy and control of your own writing. Context is not a marked objective in this section, so never write a bolt-on context paragraph.
Context must be embedded naturally, not bolted on. Instead of writing a standalone paragraph about Section 28, weave it into your analysis: "Winterson presents Jeanette's love for Melanie as tender and natural — 'I loved her so much' — directly challenging the 1980s evangelical view that same-sex desire was demonic."