Abstract

Our paper attempts to draw the connection between representations of hunger in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre and the reality of Victorian times regarding the differentiated consumption of food by members belonging to different social classes. Hunger will be approached as embodying the idea of threat, in relation to all the Victorian social classes. The deeper analysis will try to identify the functions of images of hunger in Victorian fiction, respectively social criticism and realism. Our analysis will rely on textual support provided by Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre.