Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T10:08:35.168Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

STARVATION IN VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS FICTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2008

Tara Moore*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University

Extract

It may seem that Christmas literature, with its glorified descriptions of overflowing tables and conviviality, has no place in a discussion of that other extreme, starvation. However, much of the nineteenth-century literature containing narratives of Christmas speaks directly to national fears of famine. Starvation entered the print matter of Christmas first as part of a social argument and later as a concern for the abiding national identity that had become intertwined with Christmas itself and, more symbolically, Christmas fare. Writers including Charles Dickens, Benjamin Farjeon, Augustus and Henry Mayhew, the creators of Punch, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon authored Christmas pieces that showcase literary reactions to the developing issues of hunger throughout their century. This essay offers an overview of the treatment of starvation in the Christmas literature of the nineteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Altick, Richard. Punch: The Lively Youth of a London Institution, 1841–1851. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Iswolsky, Helene. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Beetham, Margaret. A Magazine of Her Own? Domesticity and Desire in the Woman's Magazine, 1800–1914. New York: Routledge, 1996.Google Scholar
Bentley, Amy. “Reading Food Riots: Scarcity, Abundance and National Identity.” Food, Drink, and Identity: Cooking, Eating, and Drinking in Europe Since the Middle Ages. Ed. Scholliers, Peter. New York: Berg, 2001. 179–93.Google Scholar
Berry, Laura C. The Child, the State, and the Victorian Novel. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1997.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, Sumangala. “Victorian Hunger: Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry Mayhew.” Diss. U of Southern California, 2002.Google Scholar
Braddon, M. E.The Christmas Hirelings. 1894. Hastings: Sensation, 2001.Google Scholar
Brougham, Henry Peter. Lord Brougham's Speech in the House of Lords on Tuesday, February 19, 1839, on Moving for a Committee of the Whole House on The Corn Laws. London: Ridgway, 1839. The Corn Laws: The Formation of Popular Economics in Britain. Vol. 2. Ed. Kadish, Alon. London: William Pickering, 1996. 149216.Google Scholar
Carlyle, Thomas. Past and Present. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.Google Scholar
Christmas Day in the Workhouse.” Punch 45 (1863): 257.Google Scholar
A Corporation Carol for Christmas.” Punch 5 (1843): 263.Google Scholar
Cox, Don Richard. “Scrooge's Conversion.PMLA 90.5 (Oct. 1975): 922–24.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Battle of Life. 1846. New York: H. S. Nichols, 1914.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Chimes. A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Peterborough: Broadview, 2003.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain. 1845. New York: H. S. Nichols, 1914.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Pickwick Papers. New York: Bantam, 1983.Google Scholar
Disraeli, Benjamin. Sybil: Or, The Two Nations. New York: Oxford UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Farjeon, Benjamin. Golden Grain. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1874.Google Scholar
Fitzwilliam, Charles William. First, Second, and Third Addresses to the Landowners of England on the Corn Laws. London: Ridgway. 1839. The Corn Laws: The Formation of Popular Economics in Britain. Vol. 1. Ed. Kadish, Alon. London: William Pickering, 1996. 203–62.Google Scholar
Freeman, Sarah. Mutton and Oysters: Food, Cooking, and Eating in Victorian Times. London: Gollancz, 1989.Google Scholar
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Gore, Catherine. The Snow Storm. New York: Kiggins & Kellogg, n.d.Google Scholar
Heady, Emily Walker. “The Negative's Capability: Real Images and the Allegory of the Unseen in Dickens's Christmas BooksDickens Studies Annual 31 (2002): 121.Google Scholar
Hervey, Thomas K. The Book of Christmas. 1836. Ware: Wordsworth, 2000.Google Scholar
Hood, Thomas. “The Song of the Shirt.Punch 1 (1841): 260.Google Scholar
Houston, Gail Turley. Consuming Fictions: Gender, Class, and Hunger in Dickens's Novels. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Hubert, Maria. Jane Austen's Christmas: The Festive Season in Georgian England. Stroud: Sutton, 2003.Google Scholar
Humphreys, Anne. Travels into the Poor Man's Country: The Work of Henry Mayhew. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1977.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Audrey. Scenes of Sympathy: Identity and Representation in Victorian Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Jerrold, Douglas. “How Mr. Chokepear Keeps a Merry Christmas.Punch 1 (1841): 277.Google Scholar
Kadish, Alon, Introduction. The Corn Laws: The Formation of Popular Economics in Britain. Ed. Kadish Vol. 1. London: William Pickering, 1996. xilxi.Google Scholar
Kelly, Richard. Introduction. A Christmas Carol. by Charles Dickens. Petersborough: Broadview, 2003.Google Scholar
Lashgari, Deirdre. “What Some Women Can't Swallow: Hunger as Protest in Charlotte Bronte's Shirley.” Disorderly Eaters: Texts in Self-Empowerment. Ed. Furst, Lilian R. and Graham, Peter W.. University Park: The Pennsylvania State UP, 1992. 141–52.Google Scholar
Lhotsky, J.On Cases of Death by Starvation and Extreme Distress among the Humbler Classes, Considered as One of the Main Symptoms of the Present Disorganization of Society. London: John Ollivier, 1844.Google Scholar
Lupton, Deborah. Food, the Body and the Self. London: Sage, 1996.Google Scholar
Martineau, Harriet. Dawn Island, A Tale. 1845. The Corn Laws: The Formation of Popular Economics in Britain. Vol. 6. Ed. Kadish, Alon. London: William Pickering, 1996. 119212.Google Scholar
Mayhew, Henry and Mayhew, Augustus. The Good Genius That Turned Everything into Gold, or, The Queen Bee and the Magic Dress: A Christmas Fairy Tale. London: David Bogue, 1847.Google Scholar
Meir, Natalie Kapetanios. “‘A Fashionable Dinner is Arranged as Follows’: Victorian Dining Taxonomies.” Victorian Literature and Culture 33 (2005): 133–48.Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel and Ó Gráda, Cormac. “Famine Disease and Famine Mortality: Lessons from the Irish Experience, 1745–50.” Famine Demography: Perspectives from the Past and Present. Ed. Dyson, Tim and Gráda, Comac Ó. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. 1943.Google Scholar
Munich, Adrienne. “Good and Plenty: Queen Victoria Figures the Imperial Body.” Scenes of the Apple: Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women's Writing. Ed. Heller, Tamar and Moran, Patricia. Albany: State U of New York P, 2003. 4564.Google Scholar
Persell, Michelle. “Dickensian Disciple: Anglo-Jewish Identity in the Christmas Tales of Benjamin Farjeon.Philological Quarterly 73 (Fall 1994): 451–68.Google Scholar
Pickering, Paul A. and Tyrrell, Alex. The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League. London: Leicester UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Report of the Conference of Ministers of all Denominations on the Corn Laws, Held in Manchester, August 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th, 1841. London: T. Ward, 1841. The Corn Laws: The Formation of Popular Economics in Britain. Vol. 4. Ed. Kadish, Alon. London: William Pickering, 1996. 1264.Google Scholar
Royal Nursery Rhymes.” Punch 4 (1843): 17.Google Scholar
Scholliers, Peter. “Meals, Food Narratives, and Sentiments of Belonging in Past and Present.” Food, Drink, and Identity: Cooking, Eating, and Drinking in Europe Since the Middle Ages. Ed. Scholliers, Peter. New York: Berg, 2001. 322.Google Scholar
Seasonable Reinforcements.” Punch 28 (1855): 27.Google Scholar
The Shops at Christmas.” Punch 17 (1849): 25.Google Scholar
Silver, Anna Krugovoy. Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body. New York: Cambridge UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Stone, Harry. The Night Side of Dickens: Cannibalism, Passion, Necessity. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Too Civil By Half!Punch 23 (1852): 226.Google Scholar
Wilson, James. Influences of the Corn Laws, as Affecting All Classes of the Community, And Particularly the Landed Interests. 1840. The Corn Laws: The Formation of Popular Economics in Britain. Vol. 3. Ed. Kadish, Alon. London: William Pickering, 1996. 99248.Google Scholar
Wood, Peter. Poverty and the Workhouse in Victorian Britain. Wolfeboro Falls: Alan Sutton, 1991.Google Scholar
Wordie, J. R. “Perceptions and Reality: the Effects of the Corn Laws and Their Repeal in England, 1815–1906.” Agriculture and Politics in England. Ed. Wordie, J. R.. London: Macmillan, 2000. 3369.Google Scholar