Wellington 2013 – Tastefulness: Fashion, Food, Lust and Domesticity in Matilde Serao’s "La virtù di Checchina" (1884)

Abstract

Throughout Western culture the relationship between women and food has often been seen as a metaphor for something else. From the biblical episode of Eve and the apple to postmodern society, women’s eating habits have been perceived not only as natural acts of self-nourishment but also as a display of affection, sexuality and tendency to sin. Similarly, women’s clothing style has been read as an instrument of self-expression and a key marker of gender identity over the centuries. At the time of the Unification of Italy, neurology, psychiatry and gynecology supported by patriarchal ideology, explicitly identified women as naturally unbalanced beings. As a result, a rigorous diet was recommended to control their voracious feminine behaviour. Preparing meals for the family was synonymous with women’s traditional disposition to take care of others; however, eating some dishes or abstaining from them was also seen as contributing to regulate female disorderly conducts. The corset, an important fashion statement of the time, has been seen as one of the means to control – physically and morally – women’s unstable behaviour, their eating habits and sexuality, thus connecting the complex discourse on food to that on clothing. The short story "La virtù di Checchina" (1884) by Matilde Serao (1856-1927) presents several narrative instances where food preparation for the family and the protagonist’s obsession for fashion take centre stage; these passages are often coupled with the portrayal of the frustration Checchina experiences towards women’s pre-established social role. With a humorous tone, Serao depicts the social constrictions and the cultural contradictions bourgeois women were facing at the time. By analysing Checchina’s daily routine between the kitchen and the closet, I shall demonstrate that for the protagonist, the activities which involve food and clothing are synonymous with something else: a way to express her deepest feelings, communicate her emotional state and reject the repressive social role she must play in a complex socio-cultural context that promotes a fragile and asexual ideal of femininity.