Food
Michele Roberts on food in Jane Austen's novels
Published 21 July 2003
When Jane Austen describes meals, they are never innocent events
There is not much precise mention, let alone discussion, of food in Jane Austen, which makes one sit up and notice when it does occur, slotted into her exploration of family life, marriage, property and morality.
Talking about food is one way of bringing in the body, and so providing a hint of the animal life pulsing under the muslin frocks and witty badinage. But the private meals of the Bennets, the Dashwoods, or the Woodhouses are rarely described at length, for their own sakes. Breakfast is taken; luncheon invariably consists of cold meat; dinner is served; and then the conversation can recur. When meals in public, or at parties, are described, it is because they have a moral or ironic function. In Sense and Sensibility, the struggle is between politeness and instinct: "'I hope he has had no bad news,' said Lady Middleton. 'It must be something extraordinary that could make Colonel Brandon leave my breakfast table so suddenly.'"
Good manners, in this well-regulated world, are connected both to self-control and to putting on just enough of a proper show. Characters who are over-nice or greedy about their food are morally reprehensible, as we see in Pride and Prejudice: ". . . and as for Mr Hurst, by whom Elizabeth sat, he was an indolent man, who lived only to eat, drink, and play at cards - who, when he found her prefer a plain dish to a ragout, had nothing to say to her". Dr Grant, in Mansfield Park, "was very fond of eating, and would have a good dinner every day". He stirs up a terrific fuss when a "green goose" is badly cooked, and, though he is a clergyman who is supposed to preach restraint to the peasantry, scandalises the mean Mrs Norris by offering turkey and legs of mutton to the gentry around an "enormous great wide table, too, which fills up the room so dreadfully!". We know that Henry Crawford, in the same novel, won't win Fanny Price's heart, because he has been "brought up in a school of luxury and Epicurism". Similarly, Mr Palmer, in Sense and Sensibility, is written off for "his Epicurism, his selfishness, and his conceit". Mrs Elton, in Emma, picking and eating too many strawberries at Donwell Abbey, commits the further faux pas of suggesting that they all eat a picnic lunch outside.
Giving the right sort of dinners indicates social status: "Lady Middleton piqued herself upon the elegance of her table, and of all her domestic arrangements; and from this kind of vanity was her greatest enjoyment in any of their parties." By contrast, Fanny almost starves in the family home in Portsmouth. "She was so little equal to Rebecca's puddings and Rebecca's hashes, brought to table, as they all were, with such accompaniments of half-cleaned plates, and not half-cleaned knives and forks, that she was very often constrained to defer her heartiest meal till she could send her brothers in the evening for biscuits and buns." The wife-hunting Mr Collins eagerly assumes one of his cousins has cooked for him: "But here he was set right by Mrs Bennet, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen."
Food tastes certainly reveal character. Mrs Norris goes "spunging" off the housekeeper at Somerton, returning with a cream cheese and some pheasants' eggs. Fanny, who as a homesick child cannot be comforted by gooseberry tart, later weeps over "the remaining cold pork bones and mustard" in her brother William's breakfast plate, after his departure to sea, but has no tears to spare for "the broken egg-shells in Mr Crawford's".
Generous Mr Bingley sets his cook to making quantities of "white soup" for the ball at Netherfield. Good-natured Mrs Jennings tries to tempt the lovesick and anorexic Marianne Dashwood with Constantia wine, to no avail. Hypochondriacal and misanthropic Mr Woodhouse forbids wedding cake to children and roast pork to old ladies, offering gruel and soft-boiled eggs instead. Elizabeth, enjoying "the beautiful pyramids of grapes, nectarines and peaches" grown in Darcy's greenhouses, is finally realising how wealthy and eligible he is. Food is never innocent in Austen's novels.
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