“Slaughter was going on in the dining room”: Food and Violence in Molly Keane’s Fiction

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Notes

¹ Emphasizing the relationship between good behavior and aggression, Rüdiger Imhof argues that “[g]ood behaviour is really the domestic equivalent of the military code, necessitated by battle conditions” (198). For more on the harmful effects of good behavior depicted in Keane’s novels, see Adams (27–28), Franková (99), and Weekes (170).

² Keane’s experience of childhood meals was similar. Her daughter Virginia Brownlow recalls that her mother “spoke of the disgusting food in her childhood” (Phipps and Brownlow 23). In another interview, Keane also describes disgusting childhood meals: “We had breakfast in the schoolroom with the governess—usually it was something awful like porridge or fried bread (which was particularly nasty) and milk (which was supposed to be good for you). Mother came in just before ‘dining-room breakfast’ and read family prayers to us. … Lunch was at about one o’clock. That was the only meal we had in the dining-room but the food wasn’t very good and we were at the mercy of the cook. I imagine that the best food was kept for dinner at night, when the cook would also take more trouble with its preparation, but as children we never saw any of that” (qtd. in Quinn 67, 68).

³ Put in the context of a larger class history, Vera Kreilkamp argues: “Rose’s behavior, so offensive to a proper young nurse and incomprehensible to the resolutely deluded, virginal daughter-narrator, becomes a brilliant victory of the traditional victim of the droit du seigneur. Flouting her superiors, doling out the portions of whisky and pleasure that will both comfort and kill her dying master, Rose achieves real power and moral ascendancy over the Big House” (191).

⁴ Mummie’s assurance to Aroon that “[y]our home will always be here with me” (239) sounds benevolent, but her tone and terms indicate her absolute power. Mummie demands good behavior and loyalty as her conditions.

⁵ Lynch makes a similar argument when she observes that “[Mummie’s] dislike of food always bordered on the anorectic and is contrasted sharply throughout the novel with her daughter’s rebellious eating” (80).

⁶ Even later Nicandra maintains that given a chance she would have eaten the spinach: “The unresolved problem of the spinach still confronted her. She saw it, glued to its plate, a terrible love token, hers to give or to withhold. Of course, she would have eaten it if her resolution had not been broken and nullified through a gross and mistaken act of kindness” (50).

⁷ Both Twomey’s and Mrs. Geary’s health crises are signaled by food: Twomey drops the tea tray (100) and Mrs. Geary throws eggs and adds soap powder to her famous soufflé (101). The latter is represented as worse than Mrs. Geary threatening the postman with a knife, suggesting the importance of food preparation in the household.