Models for Female Loyalty: The Biblical Ruth in Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Abstract

Literary models of development, from simple fairy tales such as Snow White to complex bildungsromans such as Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, generally posit physical and/or emotional separation from home and family as a necessary step in the process of maturation. For conventional stories of male development (the paradigmatic Bildungsroman as established by Goethe), such models play out the dynamics of the oedipal phase; the male infant recognizes physiological differences be? tween himself and a female primary caregiver and learns to define his gender and identity in terms of that opposition. Leaving home simply re? peats this process for the adolescent. However, as psychologists from Sig? mund Freud to Carol Gilligan have been telling us, the process is not so simple for the female child. Not only does the female infant experience less physiological difference, but connection to home and family generally remain much more important to the girl during and after adolescence. In an effort to stay connected to their families, adolescent girls frequently resort to what Gilligan terms the voice option, meaning that, instead of leaving, they speak out to express their dissatisfaction with the family while still preserving the relationship.1 In other words, girls narrate their concerns precisely so that those concerns will not destroy the familial relationship. Traditional stories of maturation, with their emphasis on an exit solu? tion, cannot speak to the need for connection within female development, nor can they provide a literary model for its occurrence in fiction. Yet. as critics often warn, many alternative models for female development in? stead advocate passivity and patience, encouraging Sleeping Beauty or Rapunzel merely to await her rescuing prince and thus not to seek agency or maturity on her own.2 More significantly, such models often posit the relationship between women?particularly mother and daughter?as one of competition, not companionship. While obviously such paradigms are