Closing thoughts: The story of food

The cornucopia- a display of an abundance of food-  is often a symbol of prosperity. Source.

Food is weird. Let me start there. There's countless variations, countless different tastes. Some will make us violently ill while others we can't get enough of, and no two people like all the same food. Humans are obsessed with food. We celebrate it in our songs, our art, and our stories.

Through writing these posts, I have learnt to look differently at the stories I grew up with, observing them through the lens of food and seeing just how big a role it plays. I have only begun to understand how great a tool food can be for imparting wisdom as well as building  better story. Food evokes primitive reactions within us, allowing the audience of a folk tale to immediately connect with a story that features food as a main element. In The Little Red Hen, food becomes an ideological conduit, promoting the benefits of shared labour and patience as well as a divider between maturity and dependence. In Donkeyskin and "All Fur", food was a messenger of emotions and secrets. The princess is unable to admit to her true identity or to her desire to return to her past life, and so expresses it through the most visceral medium she has at her disposal- food. That her beloved consumes this creates an extra intimacy that rises from the idea of sustaining those closest to us, and in accepting the food, he accepts the princess. Religion and mythology branch out to show the deceptive tone that food can take on, but ultimately, the food itself is still an object of desire, celebrated physically if not for its connotations. I think Anansi's stories help conclude my search of folk and fairy tales because his reactions resonate with all of us; food, in and of itself, regardless of the metaphors, lessons and parables we apply to it, is delicious.

Bringing the gods down to earth: Anansi's love for food

Anansi's love for food often gets him in trouble. Source

The Ashanti folklore character Anansi the Trickster is perhaps my favourite example of food fixation in folk tales. He is an interesting character, as, despite his mischief and greed, he is not morally segregated into "good" and "bad" like most of the characters I have explored.  Anansi is always after food, often to the detriment of himself and his family. His love for food quite literally shapes who he is; one tale explores how, in his greed and laziness, Anansi tied several strings to his eight legs and his neighbours' cooking pots so that he could hurry to eat each type of food rather than help to cook them. Instead, he found himself stretched out instead, giving the spider eight thin legs (Mcnamara). In another tale, Anansi discovers a magic cooking pot, but even as his family grows hungry, his greed manifests itself: “What if I should use up all the magic of the pot on them, and have nothing more left for myself!" (Barker, 22). This selfish conceitedness is at odds with protagonists of the other folk tales I have explored; the red hen is diligent, and All Fur is loving and caring. But for Anansi, his chronic laziness and love for food define him. 

Yet Anansi is not considered an inherently malicious or evil creature. Instead, his antics in the pursuit of food serve to humanise him. This reverse apotheosis displays aspects of Bakthin's grotesque realism, with Anansi's underhanded tactics culminating in: "degradation, that is, the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract; it is a transfer to the material level" (21) Even as a god, Anansi's greed and failed schemes allow the audience to better connect with his character through the most visceral medium- food. Where All Fur, uses food as symbolic of nurture and sustenance, and the red hen to show the fruits of labour and food as a reward, Anansi represents the allure of food at its most primitive, stripping nobility and virtue to reveal a very human hunger.  As a trickster god, Anansi is free from the restrictions placed on other deities, because his stories serve a dual purpose: "As a folklore figure he is both human and divine, a person and an animal, creative and destructive, a success and failure." (Hynes and Doughty). For a powerful deity to be castigated and punished for his greed brings him down to earth for the human audience.

In Anansi's folk tales, food serves not to reinforce the stratification of divinity and mortality as in Paradise Lost. In eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve, proved themselves unworthy of Paradise in the eyes of God, but as a deity, Anansi's actions mark him as fallible. Food is so significant because it becomes a bridge between Anansi and the human audience.

Works Cited:

• Bakhtin, Mikhail, and Helene Iswolsky. Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press, 2009.
• Barker, W. H., and Cecilia Sinclair. West African Folk-Stories. Yesterday's Classics. North Carolina, 2007.
• Hynes, William J., and William G. Doty. Mythical Trickster Figures Contours, Contexts and Criticisms. University of Alabama Press, 1997.
• Mcnamara, Anna. “‘Why Anansi Has Eight Long Legs.’” USC Digital Folklore Archives, 14 May 2013, Source.

You are what you eat: Food in religion and mythology

Pomegranates hold their secrets inside a hard outer shell.

While my main focus is on traditional folk and fairy tales, it would be remiss of me not to mention the glaringly obvious examples of food's significance in religious and mythological tales. These stories convey both a cultural and historical account of virtues and values, and reveal a very different approach to food in comparison to the folk and fairy tales I've looked at in my previous posts.

The forbidden fruit is something desired, visually appealing and innocuous. Source

Where in The Little Red Hen and "All Fur", food is a reward or a way to express love and desire, it takes on a more ominous tone within religious literature. As a child, I was taught that the apple and the pomegranate both symbolised mankind's fall, a sign of weakness and hubris that led to humanity to be cast out of Paradise. But Milton's Paradise Lost does not depict the fruit as anything less than enchanting. The fruit was so delicious that Eve "ingorg'd without restraint" (791), even as the fruit is described as "eating Death" (792). Regardless of how much food takes on negative connotations, it is still an object of desire. None of the tales I've looked at, in fact, portray food as negative in and of itself, only the consequences of consuming it.

The theme of forbidden fruit is not something introduced by Abrahamic religions. Greek mythology reveals that food and consequences has long been a fascinating topic for humans. Food often depicts treachery and deceit, binding the consumer, like traditional English fae tales, or even transforming them. In The Odyssey, Circe laced the feast she gave to Odysseus's men with a potion that turned them into pigs (162). Elsewhere, the lotophagi fed Odysseus's men lotus fruits that sent them into a lethargic stupor and made them forget their homeland, trapping them on the island (139). 

Circe and her swine. Source

Odysseus extracting his soldiers from the Lotophagi. Source

Another great example of this is the story of Persephone, the daughter of the goddess of the harvest Demeter. During her captivity by Hades, Persephone unwittingly consumes food from his domain, binding herself to the lord of the underworld (Turnbull and Young, 25). The food being a pomegranate is also curious. Depictions of the biblical fruit that caused humanity's fall, while usually an apple, have also been associated with a pomegranate. The act of opening the tough exterior to reveal its seeds becomes emblematic of the acts of transgression the figures are committing. In Persephone's case, too, consuming the seeds means taking part of the underworld into herself, reminding me of my previous discussion about Bakhtin's idea of food being linked to identity. The pomegranate becomes a vessel for forbidden knowledge.

Food symbolises deception and  Source

Demeter's reaction to Persephone's abduction reinforces this polarising and profoundly negative approach to food in Greek mythology. As goddess of the grain, Demeter chooses to punish the living in her anger by withholding the harvest, killing the cattle and starving the people. There are no winners in this; in eating the food, Persephone binds herself to Hades, and in anger, Demeter deprives the land of food.

Food in religious stories and ancient mythology is enticing, exclusive, something coveted, but it can just as easily become a punishment.

Works Cited:

• Milton, John. Paradise lost. Sirius Publishing, a division of Arcturus Publishing Limited., 2017.

• Homer, et al. The Odyssey. Penguin Classics, 2009.

• Turnbull, Ann, and Young, Sarah. Greek Myths. Walker Books Ltd, 2010.

Emotions and identity: The significance of food in "All Fur" and "Donkey Skin"

Source

Of all the Grimm brothers' fairy tales, you wouldn't think "All Fur" would be the story I would want to look at. Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, all have clear connections with and messages about food. But I think the approach to food in "All Fur" makes it unique in its own standing. The story of a princess fleeing her home after her father reveals his intention to marry her, All Fur (as she becomes known) takes on the mantle of a downtrodden servant, her beauty hidden behind an unsightly cloak except for at balls. 

All Fur's desire for the king and her past life manifests itself in the food she makes for him. The soup she makes is better than the cook's, and each time the king eats it, it tastes even better. Her deliberate inclusion of her royal tokens (the ring, spindle and reel) are expressions of not only her past, but her desire to change her present. Goldberg refers to this sort of food as "recognition food" (40), food that is superior due to more than just merit. It is a symbol of the princess's status desires, as well as a reinforcement of her identity. 

Perrault's "Donkeyskin", which is an iteration of the same story, also displays a similar relationship with food. Perrault's depiction displays the prince and princess's mutual yearning as twin hunger and satisfaction. The prince, upon seeing Donkey Skin's true form, wishes to eat nothing but food made by her, and Donkey Skin sees her task of making the prince a cake as his salvation and her catharsis. The cake she makes contains the thoughts, feelings and identity she is unable to express otherwise. She transforms temporarily into her former royal self to honour the cake she makes and, like All Fur, drops a symbol of her status into the batter.  One adaptation of the story even has the recipe specifically called a "love cake": 

The ring in the soup reminds me of an Indian wedding tradition, where the bride and groom play a game involving finding a ring in a dish of milk. Supposedly, whoever finds it first will dominate for the rest of their marriage. Maybe in giving him her ring, All Fur hands her salvation to the king as well.

As we've seen in The Little Red Hen, food's role in traditional tales is useful because of the innate reactions it invokes in us. Bakhtin's exploration of literary relationships with food looks to the idea of food as reward for labour, but also why the consumption of food is also significant: 

"Here man tastes the world, introduces it into his body, makes it part of himself." (281)

For All Fur, food is imbued with the emotions of the creator,  and becomes a message of love and desire to the consumer. In "Donkey Skin", the prince's hunger is a manifestation his desire, and Donkey Skin's cake is a manifestation of her identity as well as her emotions.

Works Cited:

• Grimm, Jacob, et al. The original folk and fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm: the complete first edition. Princeton University Press, 2014.
• Perrault, Charles. “Donkey Skin.” Donkey Skin: Charles Perrault, 29 Nov. 2003, link.
• Bachtin, Michail Michajlovič. Rabelais and his world. Indiana University Press, 2009.
• Goldberg, Christine. “The Donkey Skin Folktale Cycle (AT 510B).” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 110, no. 435, 1997, pp. 28–46. JSTOR, JSTOR, link.

Introduction and the symbolism of bread in The Little Red Hen

The importance food holds beyond mere sustenance is apparent in every culture and religion, because for many groups, food is a part of their identity. For example, Islam and Judaism not only have strict dietary laws, but also stringent rules for religious slaughter, as well as prayers to be said before, during, and after a meal. What food a person consumes, how they consume it, and what method through which they procure that food becomes an indicator of their character. 

The reason I've chosen to focus on folk and fairy tales is because food often becomes a central element to the story's message. It is used to teach a lesson, becoming a tool in the narrative to convey an ideology or platitude, and this instruction starts from a young age. One prominent example of this is The Little Red Hen.

The Little Red Hen (1918) is a story that has been pieced together into its modern format from various British and Irish folk tales  from the late 19th century (Doughty, 10). The version of the story most widely recognised would be that illustrated by Florence White Williams in 1918. The hen asks the other animals for help growing and harvesting wheat for bread. The lazy animals refuse to help until it comes time to eat the bread, which is when all volunteer  to participate. Of course the hen, having done all the work by herself, takes pleasure in refusing their "help" and keeps the bread for herself. 

When I first read this story as a child, I remember being enormously satisfied at the ending. After all, why should the other animals reap the benefits of the poor hen's work? Williams' description and illustrations of the animals really emphasises their selfishness, showing them cavorting or making silly expressions as the hen works in the background.

The Little Red Hen appears to be a story about the benefits of a good work ethic and the consequences of indolence, echoing Bakthin's exploration of food as reward for labour: "It concluded work and struggle and was their crown of glory. Work triumphed in food." (305). Yet, Bakhtin focuses more on on the communal nature of the process of labour: "...Both labour and food were collective. The whole of society took part in them.", whereas The Little Red Hen suggests the opposite is not only more often true,but more desirable. Food is the ultimate prize within the story, but also a symbol of independence. The hen's hard work creates the bread, rather than it being given to her, displaying a sense of resourcefulness at odds with the lack of productivity from the other animals. 

She is also the only one shown to actively need to hunt for food: "so busy hunting food for herself and her family" (4), and yet, the other animals still grow fat over the summer, though there is little to no mention of their diet. On this distinctive difference, perhaps, Bakthin can agree: "If food is separated from work and conceived as a private way of life...Nothing is left but a series of artificial, meaningless metaphors." (281-2). In the face of the other animals' idyllic existence, the hen's industry stands out. The others' sustenance is not described because it has no significance beyond mere sustenance and gluttony, particularly when compared to the hen. In the midst of her daily activities, the hen takes the time to cultivate the wheat and enrich her life, whereas the other animals simply accept what is given to them. 

The narrative also emphasises the importance of earning the bread, reinforcing the idea of the hen as independent and resourceful, whereas the other farm animals are dependent upon the farmer for their food. It is why the hen is able to leave the farm to visit the milliner, and use the farmer's tools. By encouraging the farm animals to help her, the hen is also encouraging them to be independent themselves and leave their childish behaviour behind. Denying them bread reinforced the disparities between the hen and the animals; adults are allowed to eat what they want, while children must eat what is given to them.


Works cited:

• Williams, Florence White. The Little Red Hen An Old English Folk Tale. Project Gutenberg, 2006.
• Doughty, Amie A. Childrens and young adult literature and culture: a mosaic of criticism. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Newcastle upon Tyne, 2016.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail, and Helene Iswolsky. Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press, 2009.