Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Culinary Jane Austen, Christopher D. Wilkes

Christopher D Wilkes

In the world of domestic intimacy that Jane Austen fashions for us, food, its production, preparation and consumption, appears almost nowhere, at least in the novels themselves. But there is a complex moral economy that surrounds food, and its analysis tells us much of the broader social and economic hierarchies that swirled around the Austen families, as they engaged in a struggle for social recognition and social maintenance. When we take the Austen films into account, this analysis gains sharpness, and makes what is often inferred very clear indeed. This paper examines the social meaning of these culinary habits, first …