En exakt konst: : (Re)produktion och gestaltning av makt och normalitet genom mat och måltider i Virginia Woolfs Mot fyren

• Main Author: Nygren, Anna
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för film och litteratur (IFL) 2013
• Subjects: Virginia Woolf; litteratur; mat; General Literature Studies; Litteraturvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-26353

The aim of this essay is to analyze how food and meals produce and reproduce values and power relations and how these processes are portrayed in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Using sociological writings in the field of food consumption and production I study the structures that affect our relation to food and eating. This perspective is combined with a phenomenological view, aiming to examine how food is perceived, which is also inspired by queer theories. Using the method of close reading, the theories are applied to Woolf’s work. Themes studied are, for instance, “Food as art” and “Food and war” and how these issues are related to the production of values. It can be concluded that the meals described in To the Lighthouse are closely connected to the (re)production of heteronormative upper middleclass and English, national and patriarchal values – but also that the characters described by Woolf rebel against these values; Woolf’s description of the characters and their actions allows them to both reconstruct and deconstruct values and relations of power.