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Loading... Jane Austen and food (edition 1995)by Maggie Lane
Work InformationJane Austen and Food by Maggie Lane
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Exactly what it sounds like: a lively exploration of food in Jane Austen's life and fiction. Except there really is a lot more to it than that. It's true Maggie Lane explains things I always wondered about, like why General Tilney was upset about "the butter being oiled" (whatever that meant) or how Miss Bates baked her apples twice (wouldn't you just bake them until they were done?). Lane also gives detailed information about things I didn't know enough to wonder about. The meaning of the word "morning" in Austen's time, for instance. Silly flippin' me, I figured it meant then what it means now: the span of time from waking until noon. Nope. "Morning" didn't begin until after breakfast was eaten, and it extended until dinner. It was basically another word for "day," as Austen makes clear in a letter to her sister: "We breakfasted before 9 & do not dine till ½ past 6 on the occasion, so I hope we three shall have a long Morning enough." So women didn't pay their "morning" visits until what we would call early afternoon, because ladies often wouldn't breakfast until nine or ten o'clock, and would spend the next hour or two sewing, reading "horrid" novels, or engaging in light household chores such as consulting with the housekeeper. And if morning extended until dinner, "afternoon" was the few hours between dinner and tea. An "afternoon" walk, such as the significant one in Emma, actually took place in the early evening; and tea was not an afternoon snack but an evening ritual. Lane explains all of this deftly and engagingly. She also gives ample details as to what sort of food one might be offered at any given time of the day in a genteel household, and what those offerings symbolize. Mrs. Bennet's invitations to supper speak of her lower-class origins; the French bread and morning chocolate at Northanger Abbey's breakfast table scream of General Tilney's selfish snobbery. Just don't expect recipes. Lane writes about Regency food; if you want to learn how to actually prepare such food, you'll need a copy of Hannah Glasse's 1747 The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, or Mrs. Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery. (I got a copy of Persephone Book's 1816 edition of this latter book. It's gorgeous, but I did have to order it from England. Glasse's book is available from Amazon, and will tell you everything you need to know about how to make a vegetarian Hedgehog for dessert. But I digress.) Jane Austen and Food is essential reading for anyone researching the Regency. It's also a lot of fun. no reviews | add a review
Publisher Description (unedited publisher data) What was the significance of the pyramid of fruit which confronted Elizabeth Bennet at Pemberley? Or of the cold beef eaten by Willoughby on his journey of repentance to see Marianne? Why is it so appropriate that the scene of Emma's disgrace should be a picnic, and how do the different styles of housekeeping in Mansfield Park engage with the social issues of the day? While Jane Austen does not luxuriate in cataloguing meals in the way of Victorian novelists, food in fact plays a vital part in her novels. Her plots, being domestic, are deeply imbued with the rituals of giving and sharing meals. The attitudes of her characters to eating, to housekeeping and to hospitality are important indicators of their moral worth. In a practice both economical and poetic, Jane Austen sometimes uses specific foodstuffs to symbolise certain qualities at heightened moments in the text. This culminates in the artistic triumph of Emma, in which repeated references to food not only contribute to the solidity of her imagined world, but provide an extended metaphor for the interdependence of a community. In this original, lively and well-researched book, Maggie Lane not only offers a fresh perspective on the novels, but illuminates a fascinating period of food history, as England stood on the brink of urbanisation, middle-class luxury, and change in the role of women. Ranging over topics from greed and gender to mealtimes and manners, and drawing on the novels, letters and Austen family papers, she also discusses Jane Austen's own ambivalent attitude to the provision and enjoyment of food. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.7Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Early 19th century 1800-37LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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