Middle: Melanie, Discovery & Exorcism
Jeanette and Melanie: First Love
Jeanette first meets Melanie at a fish stall in the local market, then invites her to church, where Melanie becomes a convert. Their relationship develops naturally from friendship into love: Jeanette describes it simply and tenderly, with none of the shame or crisis that the church will later impose. Winterson deliberately presents the relationship as innocent and joyful. Jeanette tells Melanie, "I love you almost as much as I love the Lord" — and laughs as she says it, because at this point the two loves do not seem to be in competition. After the church has broken Melanie, Winterson describes her with a simile: she looks "tired and crumpled like a balloon full of old air." Winterson refuses to present Jeanette's sexuality as a problem to be solved or a sin to be repented.
The chapter title "Numbers" is quietly ironic. In the Bible, Numbers is the book of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for forty years. Winterson gives that title to the chapter in which Jeanette meets Melanie at a market fish stall and falls in love, so the best thing that has happened to her is filed under aimless wandering. When the church later opens its Bible against her, the pastor reads out St Paul on unnatural passions. That is the structural irony that runs throughout the novel: the Bible that Jeanette has been raised on becomes the weapon used against her.
Winterson presents Jeanette and Melanie's relationship as natural and joyful — not sinful. The chapter title 'Numbers' creates structural irony: the book of wandering in the wilderness names the chapter where Jeanette discovers same-sex love.
Discovery and the Church's Reaction
When the church discovers Jeanette's relationship with Melanie, the response is swift and violent. The congregation does not discuss, counsel, or attempt to understand — it condemns. From the pulpit the pastor tells the church that Jeanette and Melanie have "fallen under Satan's spell" and are "full of demons." The language is significant: by framing Jeanette's love as demonic possession, the church denies Jeanette's agency. Her love is not something she has chosen or felt; it is an external force that has invaded her. This allows the church to 'save' her through exorcism without ever engaging with the reality of her identity.
The church's response reveals the community's fundamental inability to tolerate difference. As long as Jeanette conformed — preaching, evangelising, obeying — she was valued. The moment she diverged, she became not merely wrong but evil. Winterson shows how the binary worldview established in the early chapters ('friends and enemies') now turns against Jeanette: there is no category for a good person who happens to be gay. You are either righteous or demonic.
The Exorcism Scene
The exorcism is one of the novel's most powerful scenes. Jeanette is marched to the front of the church and held there by the pastor, whose hand is "hot and heavy on my neck" while he tells the congregation she is "full of demons." When she still will not repent he tells her mother to keep her in the parlour and not to feed her, and she is locked in for thirty-six hours with a blanket and no light bulb. Winterson reports all of this in flat, ordinary sentences. That restraint is the point: the calmer the telling, the clearer it is that this is not spiritual healing but physical and psychological abuse.
After the exorcism, Jeanette is told she has been 'cured' and must repent. She agrees — not because she believes her love was wrong, but because she has no other option. Winterson makes clear that Jeanette's compliance is survival, not conversion. She tells us: "I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal." This extraordinary line reveals that Jeanette does not reject God — she rejects the church's interpretation of God. Her faith and her sexuality are not in conflict; it is the institution that creates the conflict.
Melanie's response to the church's condemnation contrasts sharply with Jeanette's. Melanie submits completely: she repents publicly, marries a man, and conforms to the church's expectations. Winterson uses Melanie as a foil to Jeanette. Where Jeanette ultimately refuses to deny who she is, Melanie chooses survival through conformity. Neither response is presented as morally superior — Winterson shows the impossible choice the church forces: be yourself and lose everything, or deny yourself and keep your community.
The exorcism is a pivotal scene: the church frames Jeanette's love as demonic possession, denying her agency. Winterson's flat, unemotional reporting makes the physical and psychological abuse plainer. Jeanette's compliance is survival, not genuine repentance — she 'misses God' but rejects the church's interpretation.
The Orange Demon: A Key Symbol
Locked in the parlour, Jeanette works out for herself that "Everyone has a demon like cats have fleas", and then the orange demon appears at her elbow and agrees. Asked why hers is orange, it explains that "the demon you get depends on the colour of your aura." The orange demon is not evil — it is Jeanette's own identity, the part of herself that the church is trying to destroy. By making the 'demon' orange (the title fruit) and articulate, Winterson subverts the church's framing: what they call demonic is actually Jeanette's truest self. The orange demon says everyone has one — implying that identity itself is what the church fears and tries to control.