In most cultures, women are in charge of meals and the rituals and customs surrounding meals. Writing the Meal explores the importance of dinners and other meals in fiction by Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf, and other women writing at the turn of the twentieth century. The author proposes that the depiction of meals has particular significance and resonance for women writers, and that these presentations of meals reflect larger concerns about women's domestic and public roles in a time of social and cultural change.
Dinners serve as both a metaphor for the work of art and a source of inspiration for the fictional artist, while some works of fiction can be read as meals offered to the reader. As part of a larger domestic experience, dinners propose a new artistic language, which can be a crucial component of twentieth-century women's art.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- 823/.91209355
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 21
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 0802085768 9781442683723
- LCCN
- PR888.F65
- LCCN Item number
- M34 2002eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaOONL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (viii, 221 p.)
- Published in
- Canada
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)thg00601147 (OCoLC)666902727 (CaOOCEL)418282
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaOONL
Table of Contents
- Contents 8
- Introduction: 'A Time to Eat' 12
- 1 Hors d'Oeuvres: Food, Culture, and Language 19
- 2 The Angel in the Kitchen: Early Twentieth-Century Trends in Dining 33
- 3 In with the In-Crowd: Edith Wharton and the Dinner Tables of Old New York 47
- Manners and Social Change 47
- Rituals of Dinner in The Age of Innocence 54
- 4 The Art of Being an Honoured Guest: The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country 69
- 5 'Hungry Roaming': Dinners and Non-Dinners in the Stories of Katherine Mansfield 90
- Homelessness and Hunger 90
- 'Ghosts of Saucepans & Primus Stoveses' 95
- 6 Through the Dining-Room Window: Perspectives of the Hostess in the Work of Mansfield and Woolf 117
- Behind the Scenes in the Kitchen 117
- Women's Domestic Space in Mansfield's Stories 121
- Mrs Dalloway's Party, Mrs Ramsay's Dinner 134
- 7 The Art of Domesticity 156
- Creativity and Meals 156
- A Domestic Language 159
- The Structure of Dinners in The Awakening 168
- The Artist's Vision 178
- Conclusion 191
- NOTES 196
- WORKS CITED 210
- WORKS CONSULTED 218
- INDEX 224
- A 224
- B 224
- C 224
- D 225
- E 225
- F 226
- G 226
- H 226
- I 227
- J 227
- K 227
- L 227
- M 227
- N 228
- P 228
- R 228
- S 228
- T 229
- V 229
- W 229
- Z 230
