Review: Tamar Heller and Patricia Moran (eds.). Scenes of the Apple. Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century.

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review: 

Recent critical theory has demonstrated that food and its preparation exceed a mere quotidian function in women's lives, in order to represent the inconspicuous marker of their position within the micro- and macro-structures of power. Discipline and the surveillance of the body, that panoptical male connoisseur which resides in female consciousness, as well as the constraints of heterosexual economy in general, stand in stark opposition to the question of satisfying women's appetites and ambitions. This collection of essays highlights women's encounter with food and writing, from the Victorian era to the present. Following Hélène Cixous's focus on the biblical scene of the apple - where Eve's defiant eating of the forbidden fruit was seen as paradigmatic of female rebellion against the invisible patriarchy - the editors associate the process of eating with the desire to speak, gain prohibited knowledge, transgress, and, eventually, claim authorship. The process of eating and/or fasting is thus interrelated with female hunger, aspiration, self-denial, and nurturing; it reflects on women's complicated relationships within the networks of power and their ways of voicing and validating their own choices.