Later: Katy, Leaving & Independence
Jeanette and Katy: The Second Relationship
After the exorcism, Jeanette outwardly conforms — but her compliance is a survival strategy, not genuine repentance. When she meets Katy, a fellow member of the congregation, Jeanette falls in love again. This second relationship is significant because it proves the exorcism was futile: Jeanette's sexuality is not a demonic possession that can be expelled. It is who she is. Winterson presents Jeanette's love for Katy with the same tenderness as her love for Melanie, reinforcing the novel's central argument that same-sex love is natural and persistent.
The chapter title "Joshua" is resonant: in the Bible, Joshua leads the Israelites into the Promised Land after years of wandering. For Jeanette, the 'Promised Land' is not a physical place but authenticity — the possibility of living as herself. However, just as Joshua's conquest involved warfare, Jeanette's journey towards authenticity involves violent conflict with her community.
The second relationship with Katy proves the exorcism failed. Jeanette's sexuality is identity, not demonic possession — it cannot be prayed away. This forces the final confrontation between Jeanette and the church.
The Church's Final Rejection
When the church learns that Jeanette is in a second relationship, she shields Katy by claiming the affair is with Melanie. The response is swift. The pastor rules that the real fault is women being given power in the church, and women are barred from preaching and teaching. Jeanette refuses to repent and tells them she is leaving the church. The pastor declares her one of the people "to whom it is impossible to speak the truth." It is her mother who then puts her out: "You'll have to leave. I'm not havin' demons here."
The escalation from exorcism (first time) to expulsion (second time) reveals the church's true priorities. The first time, they attempted to change Jeanette because they still valued her gifts — her preaching, her intelligence, her commitment. The second time, they offer her nothing but her Bible class back under supervision, and they take the pulpit away from her. Winterson suggests that the church's 'love' was always conditional on conformity. Once it became clear that Jeanette would not conform, even her considerable talents could not save her.
Leaving Home
Jeanette leaves home — expelled not just from the church but from her mother's house. She gets a job at a funeral parlour (an ironic choice: surrounded by the dead while trying to start a new life) and begins to build an independent existence. Winterson describes the new life without sentimentality. Jeanette drives an ice-cream van and works at "the undertakers, or funeral parlour as the woman and her friend Joe preferred to call it." Sometimes she has to "park the ice-cream van round the back, lay some person out round the front, then get on with my round again." The mundane detail contrasts sharply with the emotional enormity of what has happened. This is classic Winterson: using bathos to convey pain through understatement.
Jeanette's departure is both a loss and a liberation. She loses her community, her identity within the church, and her relationship with her mother. But she gains the freedom to be herself. Winterson presents both sides without insisting that liberation is easy or painless. The novel does not have a triumphant ending — Jeanette returns to visit her mother at Christmas and finds the relationship altered but not destroyed. The mother is still controlling, still obsessive, and she takes Jeanette in without once mentioning what happened. Earlier in the visit she shrugs off a glut of pineapple with the line that gives the novel its title: "After all... oranges are not the only fruit." That half-acceptance, never discussed, contains the novel's most complex emotional truth: love persists even when relationships are broken.
In the same chapter as the exorcism, the narrator breaks off to describe a secret walled garden with an orange tree at its centre: "To eat of the fruit means to leave the garden because the fruit speaks of other things, other longings." This is a direct allusion to the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden. Jeanette's 'sin' (loving women) leads to her expulsion from her 'garden' (the church community). But Winterson subverts the biblical story: in Genesis, eating the fruit is a tragedy. In Winterson's novel, eating the fruit — accepting your true identity — is necessary for growth. The title Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit now becomes clear: the church offers only one way of being (oranges), but there are other fruits — other ways of living — that are equally valid.
Ruth: Return and Ambiguity
The final chapter is titled "Ruth" — the biblical story of a woman who chooses loyalty to her mother-in-law over returning to her own people. Winterson's choice is characteristically ambiguous: Ruth is about chosen loyalty, but Jeanette's return to her mother at Christmas is complicated. She returns but does not stay. She is loyal to the relationship but has rejected the community. The biblical parallel is inverted: Ruth chose to belong; Jeanette chooses to leave, then returns on her own terms.
The novel ends without full resolution. Jeanette has established an independent life but has not escaped the influence of her upbringing. Her mother is still there, still difficult, still the most powerful personality in the room. Winterson refuses a neat ending because real life does not offer one. The novel's final message is that identity is not a destination but a process — Jeanette is still becoming herself.
The title's meaning: 'oranges' represent the church's single acceptable identity, but oranges are not the only fruit — there are other valid ways of being. Jeanette's expulsion is not just punishment but the beginning of her freedom to choose her own fruit.