Scenes of the Apple: Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing

270 Pages·2003·3.6 MB·English

by  Tamar Heller and Patricia Moran

CULTURALSTUDIES
Scenes
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Scenes of the Apple
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Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and n
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Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing of the Apple
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Tamar Heller and Patricia Moran, editors r
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Focusing on women’s writing of the last two centuries, Scenes of the Appletraces the
intricate relationship between food and body image for women. Ranging over a variety
of genres, including novels, culinary memoirs, and essays, the contributors explore
works by a diverse group of writers, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Toni Morrison,
Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Jeanette Winterson, as well as such nonliterary documents as Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and
discussions of Queen Victoria’s appetite and news coverage of suffragettes’ hunger
Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing
strikes. Moreover, in addressing works by Hispanic, African, African American, Jewish,
and lesbian writers, the book explodes the myth that only white, privileged, and
heterosexual women are concerned with body image, and shows the many cultural S
contexts in which food and cooking are important in women’s literature. Above all, the c
essays pay tribute to the rich and multiple meanings of food in women’s writing as a e
symbol for all kinds of delightful—and transgressive—desires. n
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“This is an impressive collection not only because it offers examples of the many
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ways in which women’s relationship to food is gendered—as forbidden knowledge, as

anorexia, as nurturance, and so on—but also because it shows that such cultural o
constructions of woman as desiring, self-denying, or nurturing are more complicated f
than they initially appear. It provides provocative readings of a smorgasbord of texts,
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including cookbooks, literary theories, memoirs, advertisements, and both classic and
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little-known novels. Fascinating and provocative reading.”
— Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, coeditor of Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and e
Ambivalence in Narrative by Women
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TAMAR HELLER is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature
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at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the
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Female Gothic and coeditor (with Diane Long Hoeveler) of Approaches to Teaching
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Gothic Fiction: The British and American Traditions. PATRICIA MORANis Associate e
Professor of English at the University of California at Davis and the author of Word of
Mouth: Body Language in Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf.
A volume in the SUNY series in Feminist Criticism and Theory
Michelle A. Massé, editor
State University of New York Press 0
www.sunypress.edu 0
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Tamar Heller and Patricia Moran c
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Scenes of the Apple
SUNY series in Feminist Criticism and Theory
Michelle A. Massé, editor
Scenes of the Apple
Food and the Female Body
in
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing
Edited by
Tamar Heller
and
Patricia Moran
State University of New York Press
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, ALBANY
© 2003 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production by Marilyn P. Semerad
Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scenes of the apple : food and the female body in nineteenth- and twentieth-century
women’s writing / edited by Tamar Heller and Patricia Moran.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in feminist criticism and theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-5783-4 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5784-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Women in literature. 2. Body, Human, in literature. 3. Food in literature. 4.
Literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 5. Literature, Modern—19th
century—History and criticism. 6. Literature, Modern—20th century—History and
criticism. I. Heller, Tamar, 1959– II. Moran, Patricia. III. Series.
PN56.5.W64 S28 2003
809'.93352042—dc21 2002030971
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
1
INTRODUCTION: SCENES OF THE APPLE:
APPETITE, DESIRE, WRITING 1
Tamar Heller and Patricia Moran
PART 1
APPETITE AND CONSUMPTION IN
NINETEENTH-CENTURY CULTURAL POLITICS
2
GOOD AND PLENTY: QUEEN VICTORIA
FIGURES THE IMPERIAL BODY 45
Adrienne Munich
3
INGESTION, CONTAGION, SEDUCTION:
VICTORIAN METAPHORS OF READING 65
Pamela K. Gilbert
4
CONSUMING IMAGES: WOMEN, HUNGER, AND THE VOTE 87
Linda Schlossberg
PART 2
GROTESQUE, GHOSTLY, AND CANNIBALISTIC
HUNGER IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY TEXTS
5
“THE COURAGE OF HER APPETITES”: THE AMBIVALENT
GROTESQUE IN ELLEN GLASGOW’S ROMANTIC COMEDIANS 109
Debra Beilke
6
“DEATH IS A SKIPPED MEAL COMPARED TO THIS”:
FOOD AND HUNGER IN TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED 129
Ann Folwell Stanford
v
vi Contents
7
“THERE IS NO GOD WHO CAN KEEP US
FROM TASTING”: GOOD CANNIBALISM IN
HÉLÈNE CIXOUS’S THE BOOK OF PROMETHEA 149
Chris Foss
8
“I CANNOT EAT MY WORDS BUT I DO”: FOOD, BODY,
AND WORD IN THE NOVELS OF JEANETTE WINTERSON 167
Suzanne Keen
PART 3
FOOD AND COOKING: PATRIARCHAL,
COLONIAL, FAMILIAL STRUCTURES
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REWRITING THE HYSTERIC AS ANOREXIC IN
TSITSI DANGAREMBGA’S NERVOUS CONDITIONS 183
Sue Thomas
10
LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS’ NOVEL RECIPES AND
LAURA ESQUIVAL’S LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE 199
Janice A. Jaffe
11
“A SINKSIDE, STOVESIDE, PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE”:
FEMALE AUTHORITY AND KITCHEN SPACE IN
CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S WRITING 215
Patricia Moran
List of Contributors 239
Index 243
Illustrations
2.1 Queen Victoria’s dinner six months before her death 50
2.2 Queen Victoria’s eightieth birthday menu
for her household 57
2.3 Victoria brand fruit label 61
4.1 Front cover of the Women’s Suffrage Cookery Book 88
4.2 Poster from the National Women’s Social
and Political Union 91
4.3 Postcard 96
4.4 Artists’ Suffrage League postcard 97
4.5 Cover of the Suffragette (March 28, 1913) 103
vii