Jane E yre

Hunger inJane Eyre

Victorian thought On Eating; Religion, femininity And ClassBy Sam Edwards

Jane Eyre"Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under temporary privation. A brief address on those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians; to the torments of martyrs; to the exhortations of our blessed Lord Himself, calling upon His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him; to His warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to His divine consolations, "If ye suffer hunger or thirst for My sake, happy are ye." Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!"Page 62

starved and frozen into proper Christian submission

tyranny of slenderness is a product of the mind/body dichotomy.

rooted in Christian tradition highlighting the chastisement of the corporeal body for the sublimation of the spiritual entity.

discipline their disparaged physical body.

control of appetite, denial of food and eventual slender body could symbolise spiritual exaltation.

a frail frame and lack of appetite [signified the] spiritual transcendence of the desires of the flesh.

Gilbert & Gubar

Counihan

Chou

Chou

Chou

Bordo

wanton indulgence in food, no matter how little, symbolized moral looseness and a general lack of discipline.

[The] ideal of Victorian femininity was attributed to the woman who put soul over body a physique that symbolized rejection of all carnal appetites refusal of attractive foods as a means for advancing in the moral hierarchy.

The first time in the West, those who could afford to eat well began systematically to deny themselves food in the pursuit of an aesthetic ideal.

explicitly link femininity and the moral even aesthetic imperative of self-control.

Lii

Silver

Bordo

Silver

dietary habits are never simply an individual behaviour but rather a reflection of the interaction between self and sociocultural forces [therefore] a womans appetite is an expression of her identity, which [is] strictly regulated and controlled in the Victorian era.

the normative model of middleclass Victorian womanhood shares several qualities with the beliefs and behaviours of the anorexic girl/woman.

the qualities that were used to describe the ideal feminised woman in Victorian society; spiritual, non-sexual and self-disciplined share what Leslie Haywood calls the anorexic logic.

slender form attests to her discipline over her body and its hunger.

Chou

Silver

Heywood

Heywood

women who obstain from food do so in the service of the female character.

the portrait of the appropriately sexed woman emerges as one who eats little and delicately.

Victorian gender ideology was built upon anorexic logic that validated the slim body as a symbol of a womans lack of corporeality and her respectable middle class society.

ones relationship to food is clearly a barometer of ones social status.

female ideal = slender bodies to emblematise the sexually pure and ethereal woman

fallen woman = lack of self-control and lust was presented in their large, fleshy and aggressively sexual bodies.Ellis

Mickie

Silver

Silver

Siver

slender body helps up to understand what the Victorians thought about the relationships of eating to class."Madam," he pursued, "I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world: my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think of the time wasted, of "Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted: three other visitors, ladies, now entered the room. They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls.

Silver

Jane Eyre Pg. 64

Realism must deal with the sordid and harsh aspects of human existence

classic realism performs the work of ideology, not only in its representations of a world of consistent subjects who are the origin of meaning, knowledge and action, but also in offering the reader as the position from which the text is most readily intelligible, the position of the subject as the origin of understanding and in action with accordance to that understanding.

ideology and what is represented is not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals but the imaginary relation of these individuals to the real relations in which they live.

ideology is both a real and imaginary relation to the worldMorris

Belsey

Belsey

Belsey

It is real in the sense that it is the way that people really live their relationship to the social relationship which govern their existence (class, gendered ideology etc.) but imaginary due to the fact that it discourages a full understanding of these conditions of existence and the ways in which the people are socially constructed within them.

classic realist texts work in conjunction with expressive theory and ideology to interpolate the reader as a subject. This way the reader is then invited to perceive and judge the truth of the text, the coherent, non-contradictory interpretation of the world as it is perceived by an author whose autonomy is the source and evidence of the truth.

Belsey

Jane Eyre

Hunger and realism

Realism assumes that what is important about reality can be found in the social and physical details.

Realism is prominent in the scenes where the protagonist of the novel is most physically challenged.

Bronte uses Realism in Jane Eyre as a way to provide the means of examining the governmental attitude towards social conditions of the Victorian era.

Cortney Lollar, 1996

While the working class toiled away for scanty portions of food, the aristocracy enjoyed the luxury of eating fifteen-dish meals garnished with an additional eleven-dish dessert.

Disraeli criticised England for being two nations that were fed by a different food.

to his divine consolations, if ye suffer huger or thirst for my sake, happy are ye Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge into these childrens mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you think little how you starve their immortal soulsTheresa Lii, p.2

Theresa Lii, p.2

Jane Eyre, p.63

Pitiable Hunger

Hunger is a form of self-control.

Ravenous, and now very faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my portion without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger blunted, I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess: burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it.

Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time.

Jane Eyre, p.46

Jane Eyre, p.76

Cowan Bridge School

ReferencesCharlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (Oxford: Oxford university press, 2000) Theresa Lill, Food and famine in Victorian literature (2009) Online source.Cortney Lollar, Realism and its challenge to institutionalised corruption in Pickwick and Jane Eyre. (English 73, 1996)George Levine, How to read the Victorian novel (Oxford: Blackwell publishing, 2008)Stephen Reagan, The nineteenth century novel (London: Routledge, 2001)Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Literary theory: an anthology, second edition (London: Blackwell, 2004)

Jane Eyre - HungerBy Alexander Elsmore

HungerHunger is a described as a great need or severe lack of food or nourishment.

However as a concept, hunger is a driving force in attaining of reaching a desire.

Hunger in a literal sense within the novel, and as a struggle towards fulfilment.

Hunger in regards to social condition of the timeTheresa Lils article A History of Hunger.

Shifts within food production within the Victorian age, leading towards an obsession and preoccupation with nourishment.

Pitiable Hunger.

Evident on page 42 of the novel.

Episode at Lowood School of the withdrawal of food, page 60 of the novel.

Abuse in a social context:

Theresa Lil paralleling the rampant food adulteration and the cheating of the buyers giving short weight during the early 1800s.

Realist Literature of the time as a pervasive rationalist epistemology concerned with political and social change. Lilian R Furst (ed.), Realism (Longman, 1992).

Hunger as a tool of RealismTheresa Lil Hunger as an anchor for realism and a social commentary.

Departure point for sin and love.

Not a character of self-control or self-denial, rather one of self-fulfilment.

Realist Novel in Victorian AgePreoccupation with Childhood.

Children as successful and flourishing in new social environment of industrial Britain.

Self-assertion and fulfilment.

Oppressive social environment and Janes rebellion against this.

Straddling Class Lines. Caroline Levine, Victorian Realism in The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Page 69

No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others dont love me, I would rather die than live I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest,---.

Modern Commentary on Literary Realism.Victorian age holds a focus on the individual and human relationships.

Early inclination of late twentieth century woman.

Individual liberty and sexual equality.

Page 316 of the novel, Janes extrication from Mr. Rochester.

Furthermore here resistance of St. Johns marriage proposals.

25

ConclusionTraverses the limited and subjugated environment.

Janes hunger for self-assertion and fulfilment show her as the consummate individual.

Anna Silver notes that Sometimes hunger is at the very core of a text, while at other times it is fairly incidental; in some texts, fasting serves the ideal of the slim body, while in others it becomes a largely religious undertaking, Images must be understood within the shifting and competing ideologies that determine their environment.

How far do you agree with this statement? back up your answers with quotations from the book.

Theresa Lil states that hunger becomes a powerful force that drives the action and plot in Victorian writings.

How do you think hunger effects Jane Eyre? do you think it is a driving force in the novel?