Hunger, Panic, Refusal: The Gift of Food in Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World

Abstract

If an anorexic is someone who thinks about food in great detail and refuses to eat it, then Susan Warner’s novel The Wide, Wide World (1850) could be called an “anorexic” text.¹ As it describes the journey of Ellen Montgomery to find a new home, the novel abounds with depictions of food and drinks: from tea to coffee, from candy to pork, from eating toast in a drawing room to making hearty meals in a country-kitchen. Warner’s attention to food is wide-ranging, idiosyncratic, and ambivalent. She focuses not on eating or preparing food—even though those are described in detail—but on giving it away. In her novel, Warner explores the gift of food and the way in which it creates bonds and communities.