‘A Glutton or an Epicure’: Food Acts in R. M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island

Abstract

This article argues that food acts and eating in the nineteenth century children’s novel The Coral Island (1858) reveal adult socializing intentions in the context of an expanding British Empire. Written during a transitional historical moment, R. M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island communicates to middle- and upper-class public school boys messages encoded in food to control their physical appetites and to become leaders of an expanding imperial power. Food acts and feasting fantasies become instrumental in inscribing these messages to the young audience of this novel, which drew inspiration from Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), and later influenced other novels like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954). Food acts become critical in revealing how the boys achieve a sense of cultural distinction from the natives and also learn to become enterprising leaders of the British Empire.