Appetite

“For the Victorian physician, nonnutritive easting constitutes proof of the fact that the adolescent girl was essentially out of control and that the process of sexual maturation could generate voracious and dangerous appetites. . . . an active appetite or an appetite for particular foods was used as a trope for dangerous sexuality (Blumberg, 175). . . . Doctors and patients shared a common conception of meat as a food that stimulated sexual development and activity. . . . Meat eating in excess was linked to adolescent insanity and to nymphomania” (176). . . . Meat avoidance was tied to cultural notions of sexuality and decorum as well as to medical ideas about the digestive delicacy of the female stomach. Carnality at table was avoided by many who made sexual purity an axiom” (177). . . . Female discomfort with food [was because] :Food and eating presented obvious difficulties because they implied digestion and defecations, as well as sexuality (178) . . . Food was to be feared because it was connected to gluttony and to physical ugliness” (179).