Scenes of the Apple: Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women's Writing (SUNY series in Feminist Criticism and Theory)

Focusing on womens writing of the last two centuries Scenes of the Apple traces the intricate relationship between food and body image for women. Ranging over a variety of genres including novels culinary memoirs and essays the contributors explore works by a diverse group of writers including Mary Elizabeth Braddon Toni Morrison Tsitsi Dangarembga and Jeanette Winterson as well as such nonliterary documents as discussions of Queen Victorias appetite and news coverage of suffragettes hunger strikes. Moreover in addressing works by Hispanic African African American Jewish and lesbian writers the book explodes the myth that only white privileged and heterosexual women are concerned with body image and shows the many cultural contexts in which food and cooking are important in womens literature. Above all the essays pay tribute to the rich and multiple meanings of food in womens writing as a symbol for all kinds of delightfuland transgressivedesires.