HUNGER IN

JANE EYRE

VICTORIAN THOUGHT ON
EATING; RELIGION,
FEMININITY AND CLASS

By Sam Edwards

"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

Jane Eyre

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.

Gilbert & Gubar

Counihan

Chou

Chou

control of appetite, denial of food and eventual

slender body could symbolise spiritual exaltation.

Chou

a frail frame and lack of appetite [signified the]

spiritual transcendence of the desires of the flesh.

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.

Lii

Silver

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

Bordo

aesthetic imperative of self-control.

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.

Chou

the normative model of middleclass Victorian womanhood

shares several qualities with the beliefs and behaviours of the
anorexic girl/woman.

Silver

the qualities that were used to describe the ideal feminised

woman in Victorian society; spiritual, non-sexual and selfdisciplined share what Leslie Haywood calls the anorexic
logic.
slender form attests to her discipline over her body and its
hunger.

Heywood

Heywood

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

character.
Ellis

the portrait of the appropriately sexed woman emerges as one who

eats little and delicately.
Mickie

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.
Silver

ones relationship to food is clearly a barometer of ones social

status.
Silver

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.

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 shamefacedness 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
Morris

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.

Belsey

Belsey

ideology is both a real and imaginary relation to the world

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.

Theresa Lii, p.2

Disraeli criticised England for being two nations

that were fed by a different food.
Theresa Lii, p.2

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 souls

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

References
Charlotte 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 - HUNGER

By Alexander Elsmore

 Hunger 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

 Theresa 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.

Hunger in
regards to
social condition
of the time

 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).

 Theresa 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 selffulfilment.

Hunger as a
tool of
Realism

 Preoccupation 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).

Realist
Novel in
Victorian
Age

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,---.

Page 69

 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.

Modern
Commentary
on Literary
Realism.

 Traverses the limited and subjugated environment.

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

Conclusion

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?