BAKE ME TENDER BAKE ME TRUE

BAKING in Victorian literature is never a simple activity -- it is always part of larger themes or even problems within the book.

For example, in Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth, when Gemima refuses to eat from Miss Benson's and Ruth's special tea-cakes, it is a sign of a friendship that will go bad. 

When Lucy shares the breakfast pistolets and coffee pastries with Ginevra in Charlotte Bronte's Villette, we understand that the friendship between the girls is stronger than Lucy (an unreliable narrator anyway) would have us believe.

In A Little Princess, most of the scenes in the bakery always speak of hunger and deprivation rather than plenitude and plenty. 

Also, in Charles Dickens good cooks are often dangerous -- see Mrs Joe in Great Expectations! And how benevolent is excellent cook and baker Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights? Plenty of food is not always a good thing in the Heights.

Baking and cooking, however, could also have very positive meaning -- I mentioned Jane Eyre in an earlier post, and I should also mention the magnificent Christmas day meal at the end of A Christmas Carol!