adolescent , her love of women , which is developed finely in the book - without any self-questioning of this love she feels - is in no way contradictory to her love for God . In contrary : the love she has for God is as big and as beautiful as the one she has towards the girl she loves , so why one of the two should be condemned ? In thus , when Jeanette ’ s lover is taken aback by their situation , afraid of the consequences , t h e y o u n g w o m a n s e e s n o t h i n g problematic . When her entourage , members of the Church and pious people , discover her secret relationship , she once again does not understand their reactions .
Her mother , with whom she already had a difficult relationship , considers this sin of flesh with another woman as a result of the devil ’ s play and not as a conscious act of Jeanette . All the rejection of the Church for homosexuality is here written as the entourage of Jeanette forces her to submit to an exorcism session for the devil in her to leave her body . Is thus created a small orange sphere which follows Jeanette , detached from her body but never afar , as a representation of the evil which will never leave her . The young girl finally leaves her village , running away from religious community that tried to diminish her .
If published in 1985 , this novel is a testimony of the 60s and 70s - the childhood and teenage years of the author . An image of those religious villages is drawn , villages who rejected homosexuality and pushed people to reject their identity and conform to society ’ s rules . However , by adding up fantastical bits in her novel about a myth , Jeannette the author tries to show that every history is mystified , personal and a depiction will always be distorted . She shows that history and myth are linked up by putting them side by side . This doesn ’ t change the strength of her testimony but it does invite people to think more calmly about what is written everywhere . Indeed , the subjectivity of her novel and the fact that it is inspired from real life events give the novel even more weight . This novel is a furious letter of a child who grew up in a religion , who built all her life around it before being rejected by those who constitute this religion , in the name of big rules and convenances . She rejects the latter , throughout her whole novel . Jeanette indeed insists through the eyes o f h e r i n n o c e n t n a r rator o n t h e incoherences of marriage , on the unequal relationships between husband and wife , on the difficulties and unhappiness such a sacrament can bring to someone . In the end , isn ’ t it more worth it to be happy by choice than to marry by condition ?
Jeanette is thus a child of faith , who never gets lost between her faith and her identity , but who is shunned for some reason she does not comprehend . In the end , if she is pure and devoted to God , her love of women can only but be pure as well , and does not deserve the violent rejection her community showed her . It is a human journey we ’ re invited to follow , not in the self-acceptation of Jeanette as a
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