Abstract

Our paper aims to identify the functions of dreams about food, preparing food and eating experienced by characters in 19th-century English and Romanian novels. Fictional descriptions of dreams about food and eating are usually associated with experiencing absence, anxiety, struggle and desire. Our analysis will correlate the functions of dreams about food and eating to the private and public spheres of life, as well as to gender. Eating was regarded as having consequences not only at the physical and mental level of the human body, but also in terms of social order: the poor asking for more food is an image of the Victorians fear of a revolution that would upset the stability of the upper classes; housewives who failed to nurture, feed and preserve the health of the family risked public remonstrance. Analysing dreams about eating allows us to find deeper meanings of images of food related not only to society but also to the inner world of the individual.