"Shall She Famish Then?"

Download or read book "Shall She Famish Then?" written by Nancy A. Gutierrez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nancy Gutierrez's exploration of female food refusal during the early modern period contributes to the ongoing conversation about female subjectivity and agency in a number of ways. Exploring the portrayals of the anorectic woman in the work of Ford, Shakespeare, Heywood and others and arguing that the survival of these women undermines regulatory policies exercised over them by those in authority, Gutierrez here demonstrates how female food refusal is a unique demonstration of individuality. The chapters of this book reveal how the common cultural association of women and food manifests itself in the early modern period as a trope in which the female body is a site of political apprehension and cultural change. This study is neither a history nor a survey of the anorectic female body in early modern England, but rather individual yet related discussions in which the starved female body is seen to signify certain (un)expressed tensions within the culture.