“It’s all the Same What I Eat”: Jane Austen’s Dietary Philosophy

Year 2021, Volume: 31 Issue: 1, 19 - 41, 23.06.2021

Po-yu Wei

Abstract

Jane Austen’s novels invite various studies from different disciplines, and the eating motif catches critical attention. Furthermore, while cultural study reconstructs eighteenth-century recipes and dining habits, it also reminds readers that the consumption of food in Austen’s novels has literary and philosophical significance. This study examines Austen’s food allusions and eating passages in her novels, and it finds that from Juvenilia (1787-1793) to Persuasion (1818) Austen gradually develops her dietary philosophy on eating by giving food and food consumption ethical values, arguing that Austen’s treatment of eating and food in her novels corresponds to eighteenth-century philosophical ideas towards eating. The first part of the study focuses on eating and morality. The study examines eighteenth-century English philosophical ideas about eating from John Locke (1632-1704), Anthony Ashley Cooper The Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), and David Hume (1711-1776), and it reviews recent studies on Austen’s food plots, emphasizing the importance of food imagery and allusions in the novels. The second part examines Austen’s food jokes in her juvenile writing, finding that in these earlier works she satirizes irrational dietary habits such as excessive eating and drinking. The final part of the study examines food passages and food consumers in her mature, complete novels. Here the suggestion is made that in Austen’s long novels food is given symbolic meaning and that moral significance is attributed to eating manners and food preferences. An analysis of food imagery and consumption in Austen’s works reveals that her preference for plain and modest food corresponds to the teaching of philosophers and moralists of her time and highlights the novelist’s preference for moral and decent characters.

Keywords

Jane Austen, dietary philosophy, eighteenth-century philosophy, eighteenth-century English literature, food consumption

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