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49 pages 1 hour read

Jeanette Winterson

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985

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Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “Judges”

With the backing of the church, Jeanette’s mother decides to throw her daughter out of the house. She claims that Jeanette is evil and makes her ill. Jeanette understands that this is because of how her mother feels about who Jeanette loves, but Jeanette still refuses to associate with men.

In another interspersed fairy tale, King Arthur sits at his empty court, Sir Perceval, his youngest knight, gone. He thinks of better times, before the many betrayals of his court.

The real trouble with her mother begins when Jeanette and Katy go on a week’s vacation to the boarding house in Morecambe and are caught in bed together the very first night. Jeanette tells the woman, a friend of her mother’s, that Katy was just helping her to meet with Melanie and that the fault is all her own. Katy is safe but Jeanette must leave the boarding house, and when she arrives home, her mother breaks all of the plates in the house and calls the pastor. The pastor believes that Jeanette is a victim of demons, but her mother sees her as a villain.

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