‘The Alpha and the Omega’
Women’s Empowerment in Nineteenth-Century English Cookery and Conduct Books Written by Women
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ppc.27787Keywords:
19th-century, food and gender, female authorship, great britain, cookbook history, conduct books, empowerment, Eliza Action, Isabella Beeton, The Jewish Manuel, Judith Montefiore, literary genre, morality, self-representation, social history, female solidrity, Jewish cookeryAbstract
The author analyses two well-known cookery and conduct books published in England during the nineteenth century -- Modern Cookery by Eliza Acton, first published in 1845, and Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management by Isabella Beeton, published in 1861, as well as a themed book targeted at an ethnic minority, The Jewish Manual, edited anonymously by a woman but attributed to Lady Judith Montefiore and published in 1846 -- and argues that English cookery and conduct books written by women during the nineteenth-century challenged traditional gender and social boundaries and undermined women’s submissive image by presenting modes of women’s empowerment at personal and interpersonal levels.References
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