(1) Bottle of Poison |
Before we get our teeth into the poison
in novels, we must understand what its use accomplishes - why it is so frequent
in mystery fiction. An excellent essay on food and poison is Toxic
Encounters: Poisoning in Early Modern English Literature and Culture by
Catherine E. Thomas, congruent to this blog's idea of poison and food as an
invasion of security and endangerment of a living need.
Thomas explores poison in literature as
something with multiple meanings: ‘So what made poisoning so fashionable as a
subject during the period? Simply put: it made good theatre, whether onstage or
off. But more significantly perhaps, poisoning offered a sufficiently rich
network of meanings to express key cultural concerns of the time.’ (48).
Therefore ‘Poisoning, an act defined by the physical bodies and intimate
desires of individuals, illustrates how early modern authors conceptualized
subjectivity with respect to gender, sexuality, class, race, and nationality.’
(49).
Poison in food can explore a variety of
traits such as empowerment of women: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by
Shirley Jackson, presents a female protagonist who controls her home with the
threat of plant-based poisons, killing off her family if she was slighted. I
will be analyzing this book in a later post. Thomas continues, ‘She
classifies poisoning as a method of murder that upsets traditional early modern
domestic hierarchies and allows women to gain power over the men in their lives
(either by killing them off or manipulating them).’ (50).
Thomas ends with an insightful
description of the metaphorical implications of poison: ‘Poisoning as an act
invokes questions of wilful versus unsuspecting ingestion. […] narratives
about poisoning, fictional or not, cogently express how English writers thought
about its power and pervasiveness in bodies both natural and political.’ (51).
Therefore, poison in food is more than a murder weapon but symbolic as showing
thematic values of power, gender and societal views in literature. With these
in mind, can we understand the value of poison in each text that will be analysed
in this blog.
Works Cited
(1) Chantal, Julie.
Bottle of Poison. 2013. Canada.
Julie-Chantal. <http://julie-chantal.deviantart.com/art/Bottle-of-Poison-386595328>
Accessed February 2017.
Jackson, Shirley. We Have Always Live in the Castle. London: Penguin, 2009. Print.
Jackson, Shirley. We Have Always Live in the Castle. London: Penguin, 2009. Print.
Thomas, C. E. (2012), Toxic
Encounters: Poisoning in Early Modern English Literature and Culture.
Literature Compass, 9: 48–55. 2012. Web. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00861.x/pdf>
Accessed February 2017.
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