Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body

Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

by Anna Krugovoy Silver

Anna Krugovoy Silver examines the ways nineteenth-century British writers used physical states of the female body - hunger, appetite, fat and slenderness - in the creation of female characters. Silver argues that anorexia nervosa, first diagnosed in 1873, serves as a paradigm for the cultural ideal of middle-class womanhood in Victorian Britain. In addition, Silver relates these literary expressions to the representation of women's bodies in the conduct books, beauty manuals and other non-fiction prose of the period, contending that women 'performed' their gender and class alliances through the slender body. Silver discusses a wide range of writers including Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Charles Dickens, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Bram Stoker and Lewis Carroll to show that mainstream models of middle-class Victorian womanhood share important qualities with the beliefs or behaviours of the anorexic girl or woman.

Genres: Nonfiction, 19th Century, Literary Criticism, Feminism, Psychology, Literature, History

236 pages, Kindle Edition

Reviews

[Hannah]

My tutor in Oxford bought me this book (which was really sweet of her) after we'd finished our tutorial together, saying that she'd thought that I would like it. I was really impressed with her sense of taste, because I did enjoy it and found a lot of Silver's research to be very interesting and true (not to mention, indulgent for a Victorian lit junkie). I'll admit to skimming through some parts since I didn't get them as much, having not read some of the works that she was referring to, but overall, the ideas in the book helped me to make better sense of Victorian ideas about women and some of my own experiences.

[Sam]

This was an absolutely fascinating read that looks at how the Victorian body ideals and attitudes around food and eating, especially for women, portrayed in literature provided part of the overall environment that led to the rise and recognition of anorexia. Silver takes several key and well known novels from the era and uses them to illustrate how the slender form was portrayed and became desirable and other forms treated as wrong or unnatural, including how this came through children's literature (WTF!) before moving to how hunger and repression was shown as a virtue and appetite was a vice as a woman. I found the chapter on the vampire novel particularly interesting as I've read the books referenced and now feel the need to go back and read them again with this new view in mind. Silver acknowledges in her introduction that anorexia and other eating disorders have complex causes but environment and societal pressures can be and are a bit part of the push people feel towards them. This is clarified further in her conclusion where Silver relates how the same pressures are present in the modern world, if not more so given the prevalence and dominance of the beauty/diet/fitness industries and the ease of access to misinformation and 'support' groups that encourages disordered eating (I'll be honest, I found this part of the conclusion terrifying). Silver doesn't skirt around any of the issues while remaining sensitive to the issues, which makes this a very readable book despite the heavy and sensitive subject matter.

[Graham]

A fascinating looking-back study of the societal idea of thinness and the perfect female body in Victorian literature. The author grounds this all with an introductory exploration of anorexia nervosa, before heading back to look at the vivid depictions of eating in a range of works by authors as diverse as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Bram Stoker, J.S. Le Fanu, Christina Rossetti and Lewis Carroll. Her style is fresh and original, her conclusions well-reasoned and engaging, and her book short and on-point. I find her arguments well made and her conclusions logical.

[marz]

hold on am i victorian?

[Clara Del Vecchio]

4 Stars

Read this for a term paper, but it ended up being very cool and interesting.

[Sonia]

"Nice cover", that was what most people said taking a first glance at this book. However inarguable the argument, one is left with much more think about after reading. At least that was the case with me since I'm new to the gender studies scene and at the beginning some interpretations drawn by Anna Silver seem a little alien. I'm neither an enemy nor an ally of The Patriarchy, but, nonetheless, this work made itself a very entertaining challenge for my bullshit radar. Not that it beeped a whole lot.

It all may appear to you so far like ridiculing criticism, so why the four stars? Actually not for laughs, however far-fetched the connections between cause and effect in the analyses were for me, they were also "logical in its own way", witty and presented quite convincing. I would have to read or re-read the works mentioned in the book to see if the points made by Anna Silver could be understood so obviously in the way proposed. Or if looked at in a different light they would be more plausible and coherent.

I was happy about the language and the way of presenting new concepts. The autor used formal register flexibly and she neither assumed the reader to be omniscient nor stupid. It's quite a pleaseant read in this way.

The title is nicely optimalized in relation to the topics for which it holds promise, the book is, yes, about Victorian literature, but also about women's struggle to gain autonomy through self-discipline and self-control. And by mentioning anorexia nervosa (I guess it is meant to be mainly, but not only, a metaphor) Anna silver links the XIX and the XXIc drawing the similarities and differences between them.

The choice of works is quite comprehensive even if not great in number and it's curious to look at these well-dicussed texts from a slightly different angle.
If you are a gender studies person or an open-minded bystander or even an adversary of GS but intrested in Victorian literature, you stil may find this read good for many reasons.

[Jenna M]

An excellent read. I read it first 5 years ago, and enjoyed it equally now. Rather than retrospectively diagnosing victorian women with a modern disease, it looks through victorian lit for clues to old mindsets on food and consumption and bodies. Great, feminist read.

[Sylvia Flora]

How this book has laid out the way humans might obsess about their bodies really is well-done. I cannot support the author without reading more, but her observations are spot-on, though I knew a lot of them implicitly from studying 19th century writing extensively. More on this later.

[Liz]

Skipped the last chapter as it didn't seem relevant to my research.