Jane Austen’s Appetite for Stewardship, Hospitality, and Paternalism: Food in Pride and Prejudice

Abstract

A consideration of food and the appetite it satiates in Jane Austen’s most popular novel Pride and Prejudice must combine two hegemonies of her time: clerical teachings on biblical dominion and hospitality combined in the idealistic country estate of Pemberley. This paper examines Christian stewardship and biblical hospitality as disseminated by clergy when Austen was writing and applies them to demonstrate Austen’s ideal position on the appetite for food as embodied in Darcy, Elizabeth, and Pemberley, contrasted with the flawed appetites demonstrated by Mr. Hurst, Mrs. Bennet, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh.