Culinary Inclinations as a Reflection of Identity in Joanne Harris’s ‘Chocolat’

Abstract

“Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you what you are.” : Brillat-Savarin.

Literature has always been the mode of reflecting human psyche representing the language of people’s culture and traditions. The culture of food is age old and it shapes the individuals as well as a society’s culture. Complex human issues have been analysed using food images on a metaphoric level to represent cultural identities.  Importance of food in literature and the role it played  in gender studies asserting women’s suppressed individuality and identity is an upcoming area of study. Apart from observing that women are reduced as a kitchen maker, in today’s society kitchen and cooking are a means of expressing one’s identity before the world and is well expressed in various literary forms. Food and its related concerns with feminine identity and domesticity patriarchal oppression, and repressed sexual desire.  have been given a central place in many works of women’s literature. One such English writer  who used culinary art in her work is Joanne Harris who’s novel Chocolat deals with the magical powers of chocolate and how it works on the people of a particular town attacking the cultural and traditional beliefs of that place rewriting a cultural identity.