Scenes of the Apple, livre ebook

Examines the rich and multiple meanings of food in women's writing.

Examines the rich and multiple meanings of food in women's writing.

Focusing on women's writing of the last two centuries, Scenes of the Apple traces 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 discussions of Queen Victoria's appetite and news coverage of suffragettes' hunger 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 contexts in which food and cooking are important in women's literature. Above all, the essays pay tribute to the rich and multiple meanings of food in women's writing as a symbol for all kinds of delightful-and transgressive-desires.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. INTRODUCTION: SCENES OF THE APPLE: APPETITE, DESIRE, WRITING
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
Adrienne Munich

3. INGESTION, CONTAGION, SEDUCTION: VICTORIAN METAPHORS OF READING
Pamela K. Gilbert

4. CONSUMING IMAGES: WOMEN, HUNGER, AND THE VOTE
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
Debra Beilke

6. "DEATH IS A SKIPPED MEAL COMPARED TO THIS": FOOD AND HUNGER IN TONI MORRISON'S BELOVED
Ann Folwell Stanford

7. "THERE IS NO GOD WHO CAN KEEP US FROM TASTING": GOOD CANNIBALISM IN HELENE CIXOUS'S THE BOOK OF PROMETHEA
Chris Foss
8. "I CANNOT EAT MY WORDS BUT I DO": FOOD, BODY, AND WORD IN THE NOVELS OF JEANETTE WINTERSON
Suzanne Keen

PART 3. FOOD AND COOKING: PATRIARCHAL, COLONIAL, FAMILIAL STRUCTURES
9. REWRITING THE HYSTERIC AS ANOREXIC IN TSITSI DANGAREMBGA'S NERVOUS CONDITIONS
Sue Thomas

10. LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS' NOVEL RECIPES AND LAURA ESQUIVAL'S LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE
Janice A. Jaffe

11. "A SINKSIDE, STOVESIDE, PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE": FEMALE AUTHORITY AND KITCHEN SPACE IN CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S WRITING
Patricia Moran

List of Contributors
Index