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Chapter 5 - Female Food Refusal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2021

Matt Williamson
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Oslo
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Summary

Chapter 5 argues that food refusal resonates in the early modern theatre as a gendered mode of resistance. It begins by considering the contemporary phenomenon of 'miraculous maid' pamphlets, which recounted supposedly factual accounts of prodigious acts of religiously motivated food refusal. It then turns to Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) and George Chapman’s The Widow’s Tears (1604). It places these plays in the context of changes to religious practice, contemporary understandings of the female body and the space of the household. It argues that in the context of female food refusal, hunger has the capacity to function as a form of parodic obedience to the norms of contemporary gender ideology. By carrying dictates of privacy and closure to a point of often terminal excess, these texts query or satirise the double standard within early modern English society.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Female Food Refusal
  • Matt Williamson, Universitetet i Oslo
  • Book: Hunger, Appetite and the Politics of the Renaissance Stage
  • Online publication: 28 May 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108937672.006
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  • Female Food Refusal
  • Matt Williamson, Universitetet i Oslo
  • Book: Hunger, Appetite and the Politics of the Renaissance Stage
  • Online publication: 28 May 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108937672.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Female Food Refusal
  • Matt Williamson, Universitetet i Oslo
  • Book: Hunger, Appetite and the Politics of the Renaissance Stage
  • Online publication: 28 May 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108937672.006
Available formats
×