Gluttony William I

University of Michigan Law School University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository

Articles Faculty Scholarship

1997 Gluttony William I. Miller University of Michigan Law School, [email protected]

Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/697

Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles Part of the Food and Drug Law Commons, Legal History Commons, and the Religion Law Commons

Recommended Citation Miller, William I. "Gluttony." Representations 60 (1997): 92-112.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WILLIAM IAN MILLER

Gluttony

Amongthem all, whocan descry A vicemore mean than Gluttony? Of anygroveling slave ofsense, Notone can claimso smallpretense To thatindulgence which the wise Allowto human frailties As theinglorious, beastly sinner, Whoseonly object is-a dinner. -WWm.Combe 1815'

GLUTTONY DOES NOT HAVE THE GRANDEUR OF PRIDE, the often brilliantstrategic meanness of envyand avarice,the gloryof wrath.It does man- age to gain some small allure byits associationwith lust, its sexy siblingsin of the flesh. Yet there is somethingirrevocably unseemly about gluttony,vulgar and lowbrow,self-indulgent in a swinishway. Gluttony is not the stuffof tragedyor epic. Imagine Hamlet too fat to take revenge or Homer making his topic the gluttonyof Achilles rather than his wrath.2With gluttony,compare pride and anger,sins thatmark the grand action of revenge,sins thatcan be emblematized by tigers,lions, eagles, and hawks,rather than by pigs and (dare I say it) humans. Gluttonyrequires some immersionin the dank and sour realm of disgust.Glut- tonyinevitably leads to regurgitation,excrement, hangover, and gas and to despair and feelingsof disgust.But it has a cheerier side too that I don't mean to ignore: the delightsand pleasures of good food, drink,and convivialjoys.If glut- tonyoften drags disgustin its wake, it also motivatesa certainkind of amiability that makes for good companionship,hospitality, and even a kind of easygoing benevolence. Most of the seven deadly sins are less properlysins than dispositions,tenden- cies, or traitsof character.Nor are theya complete listof sin-generatingdisposi- tions. Fearfulness,for example, is surely a much graver motivatorof sin than gluttonyand even pride.Just what is it about gluttonythat makes ita vice? Do the grounds of its viciousnessshift through time? Could one ever claim gluttonya virtuewithout also being a shallow hedonist?Even David Hume, who took great delightin making the case for the virtueof pride, was willingto go only halfway on gluttony'sbehalf, arguing, in effect,that obsessing on its viciousness meant you were moved bythe unamiable vicesof crabbed moralismand frenziedenthu- siasm,not thatyou were manifestingvirtue:

92 REPRESENTATIONS 60 * Fall 1997 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions To imagine,that the gratifyingof any sense,or the indulgingof any delicacyin meat, drink,or apparelis of itselfa vice,can neverenter into a head,that is notdisordered by thefrenzies of enthusiasm.3

We are somewhat conflictedabout the precise moral status of gluttony.In- deed, as we shall see, so were earlier ages, although the grounds of theirambiva- lence were ratherdifferent from ours. Among us the sin of gluttonyis the sin of fat,whether it lolls about men'spaunches (note thatfat transforms stomachs into paunches, pots, or beer bellies) or else squigglesloosely about women'sthighs, or clogs the arteriesin a gender-neutralfashion. Gluttony for us is the sin of ugliness and ill health,but chieflyugliness. Except forphilosophers and theologians,most of us have nevermanaged to distinguishtoo wellbetween the good and thebeauti- ful,between the ethicaland moral on one hand and the aestheticand pleasurable on the other.As a matterof practicalmorality, ugliness remains, despite centuries of pious exhortationto thecontrary, a sin. And thevery cachet of gluttony'shistor- ical pedigree as an honored memberof a select group of capital sins helps relax the grip of those nigglingscruples we may have acquired about blaming the fat for theirobesity. There is nothingquite like the sin of fat.Its wages, we are told, is death-physical, moral, and social. The author of a best-sellinghow-to-raise- your-adolescent-daughterbook reportsthat 11 percentof Americanswould abort a fetusif theywere told it had a tendencyto obesity.Elementary-school children judge the fat kid in the class more negativelythan theydo the bully.4In thislife, the fat are damned, the beautiful (who manifestlyare not fat) are saved, and we are not sure that this ordering doesn't also anticipatearrangements beyond the grave. But thisis a veryrecent historical development, for when the poor were thin, fatwas beautiful.And when povertycame to be characterizedless by insufficient calories and more by too many calories of the wrong kind, fatbecame ugly.In a perverseway, the poor determinefashion by providingan antimodelof the ideal body type that the rich then imitatenegatively. I will discuss these issues more fullylater but let me not loosen my grip on thismorsel of an argumentwithout adding the followingtidbit: although not all gluttonyleads to obesity,nor is all obesitythe consequence of the voluntaryindulgence in the vice of gluttony,we antigluttonousmoralists are never quite willingto pardon fat. The burden of proof,we think,is upon fatpeople to adduce evidence thatthey are not gluttons, for fat makes out a prima facie case thatthey are guiltyand thus owe the restof us an apology or an explanation forhaving offended.

When the firstlist of the chiefsins appeared at the end of the fourthcentury there were eight of them and gluttonyheaded the list.5Pride may have been thoughtmore serious,but gluttonystill got firstbilling. Gluttony, doing general service for all the sins of the flesh,was also listed firstin the shorterlist of the

Gluttony 93

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions three temptationsof Christ,although the temptationsnever enjoyed the long- runningpopularity of the seven vices.6Gluttony also was listed firstby John Cas- sian who introducedthe listof sins to the Latin Westin the fifthcentury, and an occasional writerwould see fitto startwith gluttony as late as the thirteenthcentury.7Considering thatthe orderingoriginated with severe desert ascetics,it was no accidentthat they listed first what was torturingthem most: desires of the flesh, food first,then sex.8 In the end, however,the orderingof St. Gregorythe Great (d. 604) carried the day, and in that order Superbia(Pride) claimed its prideful place as first,as made sense for the moral ordering of a less obsessivelyascetic and more secularized world; gluttonywas stuckback in the pack one step ahead of lust,which figured last. But the preacher whose topic was gluttonyhad no problem findingbiblical and patristicsupport for claiming its historical priority even ifit was in some sense less serious a sin than pride and avarice. After all, was it not appetite for the forbidden fruit,desire for that apple that cost us all paradise? Thus Chaucer's Pardoner: o glotonye,full of cursednesse! o causefirst of our confusion! o originalof our damnation, Til Christhad boughtus withhis blood again! Lo, howdeare, shortly for to sayn, Aboughtwas thilke [this, such] cursed vileynye! Corruptwas all thisworld for glotonye.9

And considerablyearlier in the fourthcentury St. John Chrysostomwas also willing to add the flood to gluttony'sdiscredit: "Gluttony turned Adam out of Para- dise, gluttonyit was thatdrew down the deluge at the timeof Noah."'0 Quite an unsavorybeginning for our amiable vice. To us, Eve has more in common withPrometheus than withthe fat lady in the circus.No desperate resortto the gloss of food-obsessedascetics was required to give pride and avarice preeminence. Does not Ecclesiasticusdeclare pride the beginning of all sin (Sir. 10:13) and St. Paul in his firstletter to Timothy make avarice "the root of all evil" (Tim. 6:10)? But the image of gluttonyas the firstsin was persistent.The officialhomilies of the Anglican church followed the same line. Adam and Eve were gluttonous,said the homilist,and theirexcesses cost us paradise."I Higher-browtheologians, perhaps the highestbrow of all, St. Thomas Aquinas, even feltcompelled to address the issue of gluttony'spriority before dismissingit and assertingthe preeminenceof pride and avarice.'2 Whethergluttony is firstor penultimateis not so crucial; what is remarkable, however,and this was obsessed upon by medieval and early modern moralists, was just how fertilegluttony was of other vices. The power of a vice to generate

94 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions othervices was whatthe theologiansunderstood to make a vice capital. Less rigorous souls-or rigorous souls who doubted theirpowers to resista good meal- could argue that gluttonyshould be winked at: "But is there anyone, 0 Lord," says a desperate Augustine, "who is never enticed beyond the strictlimit of need?"'3 Eating is necessaryfor life and the blame forlack of measure should be discounted for that reason. But Aquinas concluded that gluttony'sproductivity of vice was undeniable and the sin was thus unarguablycapital. 14 Gluttonypaved the way to lust. It was lust's"forechamber" in the words of a seventeenth-centurysermonizer.15 If in a post-Freudianworld we have learned to eroticize food, privilegingsex and lust as the prime movers and motivatorsof virtuallyall desire, premodern people ratherastutely inverted the order. They alimentarizedlust. It was food, ingestion,and alimentationin all its formsthat provided the dominant metaphors and explanations of motive and desire. No medieval preacher,in his most free-associativemoments, ever thoughtto make lust the firstsin or the prime sin. But gluttonysprang immediatelyto his mind. It was feastsand food thatengendered lust.Food and drinkcome first,as even today theymust, despite the bad twentieth-centurycliche of followingsex withthe oral gratificationof a cigarette.(Should smokingbe included withinthe broad param- etersof gluttony?Arguably yes.) In the Wifeof Bath'sraunchy idiom "a lickerous [gluttonous]mouth must have a lickerous [lecherous] tail." Notice how the connection between gluttonyand lecherywas even reproduced at the level of the word lickerous.Lickerous meant tastywhen describingfood and gluttonouswhen describingpeople or theirmouths as in the Wife'squote, but it could also mean lecherous or lasciviousas it did when the Wifeused it to modifytail. Middle and early modern English supported delightfulpunning possibilitiesthat followed the Wife in playingsuggestively with the homophonyof lickerous,lecherous, and lick,in whichgenital lust is a handmaid to the larger gluttonousoral order.'6 In spiteof mythsperpetuated by pop cultureas to the primacyof the genitals, lust often needs the assist of drink or dietarysatiation to dull our initial,less generous assessmentsof the other'sdesirability or to quell our concernsabout the inevitablesacrifice of dignitythat comes withindulging lust. Feeding may itself be sufficientlydignity-deflating to pave the way for even greater riskingsof it. The pictureisn't all as dark as that,for food suggeststhe delightsof conviviality, and convivialitysuggests the delightsof fleshlypleasure. Most of us findthe occasional risksto our dignitywell worthit. But can there be any dispute about the relativeordering? At the level of the individual,eating enables fornicationwhich in turn produces the next generationof gluttons. Gluttonywas also inextricablylinked with sloth and thisstrikes us as perfectly apt. It was only toward the end of the medieval period thatsloth startedto take on the sense of laziness; medieval slothwas accidie,a kind of despairingtorpor of thinkingyou were excluded fromGod's grace.'7 It was the nobler medieval ver-

Gluttony 95

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions sion of our contemptiblenotion: low self-esteem.But sloth had a homelier side too. It was the despair of the morningafter, hangover, nausea, heartburn,and headache. WilliamLangland's allegoricalglutton in PiersPlowman vomits, passes out drunk, and is carried home to bed by his wifewhere "afterall thisexcess he had an accidie."'8 Langland even alters the traditionalordering of the sins to substitutesloth for lust at gluttony'srear. He gives us a realitycheck: lust may indeed followupon gluttonybut thatis, in fact,a consummationto be greatly- if not quite devoutly-wished. The grimfact is you mostlyend up in bed humili- ated and witha hangover,rather than withsome delightfulenticer of the flesh. Sloth seems to capture the sense of defeat and shame that are the frequent aftermathof gluttonyand lust. It is the shame of having indulged in the present withoutthought for the future.Or forthose binge eaters of today it is the shame of weaknessof will,of eating to filla void thatno longer existsin the stomach,but ratherin lifeitself. It is the shame of preferringpresent sensory satisfaction even to presentdignity. Sloth is theretreat into primordial ooze. Gluttonythus becomes the fostererand hence the emblem of all sin thatfavors instant gratification, the fillingof presentemptiness with corporeal sensationat the expense of spiritand futurity. Gluttonywas also thoughtto lead to pride. Food and feastswere the central props in competitivedisplays, as in a slightlydifferent way people who care about being especiallygourmet or discerningabout theirfood and wine compete among one another today.In premodernand classicaltimes it was notjust the qualityof food that was at stake in the competition,but gloryingin the display and in the expense. Gluttonythus came to be understood as somethingmore thanjust the swallowingof too much food; it was the whole cultureof eating and competitive production for the table thatengaged the sin of gluttony.'9Gluttony and pride, in other words, connived to fuel a form of potlatch.And pride's influenceon gluttonyjustifies the reasonable beliefthat there may be as much gluttonyin the pretentiousnessof small and highlyproduced portionsof nouvelle cuisine as in the huge portionsand endless replenishmentsof a Texas barbecue. Even envy figuredin gluttony'sretinue. One early fifteenth-centurywriter, blastingthe gluttonyof the court,recounts that one of the consequences of the general gluttonythere was the miseryof the lowliercourtiers who sufferedthe bitterenvy of seeing the best smellingand best tastingdishes made available to those higherin the peckingorder, but not to themselves: But whenthese courtiers sit on thebenches idle Smellingthose dishes they bite upon thebridle, And thenis theirpain and angerfell as gall Whenall passethby and theyhave naught at all

Suchfish to beholdand nonethereof to taste, Pureenvy causeth thy heart near to brast.20

96 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Avarice,on the otherhand, had an ambivalentand more complex connection withgluttony. We can get at itbest by noting that the archetypalvillainous glutton for the medieval and early modern period was also cast as the archetypalavari- cious man. He was Dives of the parable of Lazarus in Luke 16:19. Dives fared sumptuouslyevery day, and to the medieval mind that sumptuous faringwas a sign of avarice, or cupidityin theirterms, as well as of gluttony.Avarice meant somethingmore thanjust tightfistedhoarding back then. It meant being overly concerned about acquisition to the exclusion of more spiritual matters.Dives, afterall, was hardlya miser,but he spent freelyon the wrong thingsand so was understood to have been damned eternallyfor his gluttonyand wealth. This strikesus as a prettydisproportional system of punishment,given that Dives'sjoys were finite,more, in fact,sins of omission, of being blind to the sufferingof another,than sins of commission. But Dives's wrongswere more seriousin thatearlier moral order than in ours. His avarice and gluttonyare played out in the face of a famished and leprous pauper. And these sins mean somethingquite differentin a world of constant and pressing caloric scarcity.In an economic order in which there is not food enough to go around, in which starvationand famineare alwayslurking about, gluttony'smoral stakes ratchet up. Gluttonywas not just self-indulgenceas it mostlyis among inhabitantsof developed countrieswhere it imposes on others only the trivialcost of the unpleasantnessof seeing the glutton'sfat; forthat earlier economic order it was, in a sense, murder or a kind of criminalnegligence, like drunk drivingis forus. The medievalwriter who mostdirectly worried about the distributionalaspects of gluttonywas Langland. In Piers Plowman, every mouthfula gluttontook beyond his measurable need was an affrontto the poor. Eating was a zero-sum game. The more you ate the less someone else did. And any ingestionbeyond what was necessaryfor the maintenanceof life was an act of injustice.Langland's gluttonswere the nonproducingrich, sturdy beggars who would not work,and above all the friarswhose gluttonywas undertakennot only in the face of the poor but also in spite of theirown vows of poverty.The friars shared with Dives the mantle of personifiedGluttony, actually doing him one betterby spicing their gluttony with hypocrisy. In Langland's arrestingimage they "gnaw God in the gorge when theirguts are full"(PP, B 10.57).2 But it is in preciselysuch an order of scarcitythat the impulses to glut are at their greatest.Despair can drive some to live according to the principle of eat, drink,and be merry.Others, more prudent,might be driven to acquire desper- ately,avariciously in theirsense, so as to engorge themselves-not as a formof consumptionbut as a formof saving.They are literallyfatting themselves for the lean times ahead. And this paradoxical method of saving by avidly consuming makes sense when any postponerof gratificationwas certainto see a good portion of the grain he had storedravaged byrats and birds,stolen by humans, rottedby damp, or consumed by fire.

Gluttony 97

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Dives raises another issue thatwas noted back then. Feasting,though neces- sarilyrisking gluttony, was also the occasion forsome redistributionsfrom rich to poor-paltry, but redistributionsnonetheless. Remember that Lazarus received the crumbsfrom Dives's table. Gluttonybecomes a kind of attenuatedalmsgiving. Convivialitymeans consuming food to be sure, but it also means sharing it and even wastingit so that human scavengersand gleaners can be nourished. And thoughWilliam Langland ventsconsiderable indignation on wasterswho destroy withgluttony what hard workersproduce, he is equally indignantwhen the con- sumingclasses growless hospitable,curtail the size of theirboard, and starteating in privateso as to exclude the poor and avoid theirclaims for the scraps: Nowhath each richa rule-to eat byhimself In a privateparlor for poor men's sake, Or in a chamberwith a chimney,and leavethe chief hall That wasmade for meals, men to eat in, And all to spareto spillthat spend [waste] shall another. (PP, B 10.98-102)

The last line scorns avarice of a new sort; the kind that works against gluttony; the kind that makes for smaller portions,for smallerguest lists,and for quieter and more civilized company. Civilization,Langland intuitslong before anyone else does, means notonly eating in privatebut also saving,deferring consumption. It is stilltoo early for Langland to imagine that preventingwastage ("spare to spill")will amount to any good. He stillsees the savingsas merelyfunding another gluttonouswaster ("that spend shall another"), rather than creating the capital thatwill fund the constructionof privatespaces. Feastingwas also the occasion forsociality. Chaucer is able withwit and econ- omy to demonstratethe hospitableamiability of his Franklinsimply by giving the generous plenitude of his board a natural energy of its own: "It snowed in his house of meat and drink."22To be too abstemiousabout one's food, to put out a spare and meager board, was to riskgiving social offense.Moralists knew this and said thatit was a temptationof the devil to allege reasons of sociabilityto indulge gluttony.Don't be a partypooper saysthe fiend:"Dost thou know thatpeople are calling thee a niggard?"23Virtues like sociability,hospitality, and amiability seemed to require a certainindulgence in gluttony.This is astute psychologyon the part of the devil as well as on the part of the moralistwho understoodjust how powerfula hold the normsof sociability,generosity, honor, and competitive convivialityhave on us. Even among us, the nondrinker and the vegetarian promptless praise for theirtemperance than warinessand a touch of annoyance for theirimplicit condemnation of the formsof conviviality.We mightbe willing not to behave like pigs, but thatdoes not mean, suggeststhe devil, that we have to behave like self-mortifyingand joyless desertsaints either, especially when act- ing in such a manner avariciouslykeeps our purse thickas it thinsour paunch. Gluttonyin the Middle Ages and early modern period was a seasonal sin.

98 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Where there is no refrigerationand storage is more costlythan consumption, more gluttonousconsuming goes on when the perishable foodstuffis ready to eat. So people gluttedat harvestand at the late autumn slaughterof beasts.Orgies of food at certaintimes were almosta requirementof theirstate of productivity and technology.Sin it mayhave been, but theydidn't have much choice. And they would suffertoo, to the moralist'smean delight,not only the hangover of the feastbut the desperate shortagesin earlyspring when gluttonytook the formnot of eating well or fullybut of thinkingobsessively about food and where one was to findit. The contrastwith our alimentaryeconomy could not be more startling. We can save food, and our productionlevels are high enough to let us glut day in and day out, springor fall.

The core of gluttonyhas alwaysbeen understood to mean the excessivecon- sumption of food. In the Middle Ages it was assumed that excessive drink was also at the core. In fact,it was via drunkenness that even wrath was admitted to be a mournfulconsequence of gluttony'spowers to generate other sins. The gluttonousdrunkard is quick to anger and shorton controllinghis temper.Lot was conventionallycited to showjust how bad a fixexcessive wine-bibbing can get you in. In Langland's words: Throughwine and throughwomen there was Lot encumbered, And therebegot in gluttonygirls [children] that were churls. (PP, B 1.32-33)

But by the late sixteenthcentury gluttony had come to be seen as more a matter of food than drink,so thatone moralistfelt it necessaryto explain himselfwhen he included drink: "Under Gluttony,I shroud not only excess in meat, but in drinkalso."24 We are psychologicallysubtle enough to recognizethat anorexia and compulsive dietingas well as addiction,bulimia, gourmetism, alcoholism, and any num- ber of irrationaland obsessive behaviors regarding the ingestion of food and drinkproperly belong under the rubricof gluttony.Medieval commentatorsalso understood that gluttonywas more thanjust eating to excess. Followingdistinc- tionsmade byGregory the Great in the sixthcentury, writers on vices and virtues well into the fifteenthcentury understood gluttonyto have fivemain branches: eating too soon, too much, too avidly,too richly(in the sense of expensively),and too daintily.One remarkable traditionof medieval writingon the deadly sins subsumed under gluttonyall vicesof the mouth:25lying, backbiting, blaspheming, boasting,perjury, and grumbling.Even heresyand witchcraft,apparently by way of blasphemy,were dealt withunder the rubricof gluttony.In thistradition the tavern is seen as the devil's temple in which riotous drinkingleads to gambling and swearingand takingGod's name in vain.26 There is somethingbizarrely modern about generalizinggluttony to encom-

Gluttony 99

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions pass all the sins in which the mouth figures.Sigmund Freud achieves the same effectby suggestinga matchingof each memberof the triad of erogenous zones withits particular sin. Gluttonyis oral, avariceanal, and lustgenital. Each of these vices has its particularpleasure and the prospectof thatpleasure is preciselythe temptationto indulge it. This contrastsgreatly with, say, envy, which is its own punishment,except to the extentit allows for the indirectpleasures of Schaden- freude.But food and talk,these are thevery substance of oral pleasure and conviviality.The drawbackscome fromoverindulgence, not fromjust any indulgence. That is, littlegluttonies are prettymuch a pleasure pure and simple (the notion of littlegluttonies is not incoherent,for even if gluttonyby definitionmeans ex- ceeding measure, thereis a sense in whichsuch excesses can be minoror major); big gluttonies,however, end in the miseryof hangover and the heaviness and shame of satiation.The culminatingvileness of gluttonyis the vilenessof vomit and the repeated returnto it in the manner of the dog in Proverbs;the punishment is oral just as the sin is. In thisway our physiologyseems to be committed to the law of the talion: what by mouth offendsshall by mouth make atonement. Both pleasure and pain willfocus on the mouth.And in thisoral world,spewing foul words is a vomitingforth, revealing one's soul as stinkingand as unnatural as we perceive vomitto be.

What is it thatis sinfulabout gluttony?I have already touched on thisbriefly when I noted that the gravityand even the content of the sin might vary depending on whetherthe relevantsociety is one of plentyor one of endemic and severe scarcity.The general moral regime would also alter the moral stakes and the moral contentof gluttony:for instance, in rigidascetic communities gluttony mightbe more of a temptationthan pride, lust more than wrath.The idea that gluttonyis sinfulbecause it involvesan unjust distributionof necessitiesfor the maintenanceof life is rarelyposed as the centralmoral issue of gluttonyeven in the Middle Ages. Stillit figuredin the Middle Ages, and more thenthan now. But even in modern timeswe are asked to consider our own plenteous consumption in the face of the starvationof others.The differenceis thatDives ate, literally,in the face of Lazarus; Lazarus was lookingon. We, on the otherhand, mustexercise a bit of imaginationto see the starvingas we eat. The walls that grant us our privacyand the basis for no small amount of our complacencyallow us also to imagine the starvingas less repulsiveand more patheticallydeserving of our at- tentionthan theirimmediate presence would tend to make them,but the same immured privacylets us simplytune them out by turningoff the evening news. Dives's remedial action is easy and obvious: he should have fed and cared for Lazarus. Ours is less easy and obvious because the other'ssuffering takes place at a distance and is mediated via impersonal marketsand internationalcharitable organizationsthat promise to translateour cash into food at some distantpoint

100 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions out of our sight.When I was a child my teachers told me to thinkof the poor starvingKoreans and to eat everythingon the plate of mygovernment-subsidized hot lunch. Even to a first-gradekid it seemed absurd to thinkthat eating what revoltedme helped relieve starvingKoreans. There are several layersof ironyto a strategythat seeks to combatsinfully negligent waste by training up a generation of gluttons. There were other grounds,recited by both medieval and classical writers,of gluttony'sviciousness and danger. Surely gluttonydestroyed the soul, but it also destroyedthe body,the veryobject thatthe gluttonwas so devoted to. Gluttony was unhealthy: Hereofprocedeth the vomit and thestone And othersickness many more than one.27

If argumentsurging charitytoward others fell on deaf ears, and argumentsdi- rected toward postmortemeternity were too remote to impel compliance, the preacher had recourse to naked and presentself-interest. The Anglican homily tried to terrorizehis listenersinto compliance by noting the sudden deaths that cometh withbanqueting. Excess generatesunnatural heat makingthe body slug- gish and "unfitto serve eitherGod or man." And the gluttongets more negatives than positivesfrom his food: "Except God give strengthto nature to digest, so thatwe maytake profitby [our foods],either shall we filthilyvomit them up again, or else shall theylie stinkingin our bodies, as in a loathsome sink or channel."28 The preacher pulls no punches here; he seeks to quell appetite byreminding the gluttonjust how his body transformshis delectablesinto the quintessence of the disgusting:vomit and feces. Food thus becomes its own punishment,its own hell on earth. One writereven suggeststhat the gluttonshould be punished as a suicide: We do nothingbut fatten ours souls to Hellfire.Our bodieswe bombastand ballastwith engorgingdiseases. Diseases shorten our days,therefore whosoever englutteth himself, is guiltyof hisown death and damnation.29

The devil,of course, was no slouch either,and he used argumentsfrom health to prompt gluttony.Fasts will weaken you, you must keep your body's health for holiness. Says the devil, "Don't eat for the delightof the body,but to serve God the better; thou shalt keep thystrength to serve God; that'swhat David says."30 We, like those premodernpreachers, make gluttonya matterof health,more so than theydid. For us itis a major argument,for them it was a minorone. Some of the viciousnessthey find in gluttonystrikes us as strange.Gluttony not only wasteswhat otherscould more profitablyuse; it also wastesyour own estate. The fear was notjust ill corporeal health,but poverty,even as late as the early eighteenthcentury:

Gluttony 101

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Fatpamper'd Porus, eating for Renown, In soupsand saucesmelts his manors down Regardlessof his heirs, with mortgag'd Lands, Buyshecatombs of fish and ortolans.3'

This concern is a corollaryto the economic pointmade earlierregarding a regime of severe scarcity.Sumptuous fare was expensive. And recall that gluttonyis al- waysmore than a matterof quantity;it is also about delicacyand rarity,exquisite- ness and voluptuousness of the palate. Robert Burton notes in The Anatomyof Melancholya perverse psychologicalverity that "those thingsplease most which cost most. The dearest cates are best."32And as we have seen, pride entered the frayto up the ante too, because how much you spent determinedyour rank in thisgluttonous potlatch. Gluttonyis vicious because in some economies it is a formof homicide, because it is also unhealthyand so a formof suicide,and because itwastes one's own goods, riskingpoverty for oneself and securingit for one's heirs. Some of these grounds strikeus as more compellingthan others,but theywere all makeweights in the moralist'sargument against gluttony.The true ground of gluttony'ssin- fulnesswas thatit, along withlust, was a sin of whatwas once knownas "security," that is, of culpable negligence in the ordering of one's own systemof values. Thomas Nashe, writingin the late sixteenthcentury, puts it best: Securityis "for- gettingmortalitie; it is a kind of Alchymicalquintessensing of a heaven out of earth."33These are the people whose God is theirbelly, the ones who drove the flintySt. Paul to tears.34 In a moral order thatsets greatstock by what it calls the spiritual,the glutton poses against it notjust general corporeality,but the most vulgar and unseemly corporeality:not the arms and legs, not muscle,but organ meat, the gut. The gut should never be an end in itself;it should alwaysfigure subserviently as a means thatenables other less embarrassingportions of the body and soul to thrive.The belly is there to serve the spiritual,the intellectual,and the productiveworking body thattills the soil. In the Christianscheme the glutton'ssin was close to apos- tasy; it was infidelism.Paul chose his metaphors with a purpose: these people substitutedtheir guts forGod. The bellyis more than a false god. It constitutesa special affront;it mocks God in a way his other competitorsdo not. Some false gods at least demand heroism,sacrifice, or the denial of self-servingconcerns about one's own salvation.35But the glutton'sGod was his own pampered gut; by thusincarnating God in such a low-statusorgan he also reduced himselfto mouth, guts,and anus, a mere tube fuelinga feel-goodmachine. This was no minorsin in the Christianscheme, at least as Paul would have it. True, pride set oneself up against God, thus in factits special grievousness,but pride took one's virtue,one's glory,one's mightand main,one's giftsand achieve- ments seriouslyand valued them. Pride did not deny the spirit.Rather it chal-

102 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions lenged God by posing an indomitablehuman spiritagainst the demands of the Divine One for obedience and subservience;gluttony simply sets up the alimentarycanal as the end, an end thatsees us finallyreduced to fat,sated fleshlolling in a viscous,oozing, spiritlesslife soup, in an eternalrecurrence of feeding,excre- ting,rotting, and generating.(To be sure, pride has its vulgar side too, but the simplificationstill captures a certain truthabout the differencebetween pride and gluttony). Yet didn't Christianityask for the trouble it got fromgluttony, at least once the doctrine of transubstantiationwas made dogma in 1215? Christianity,after all, featured the mouth and the alimentarycanal in the central mysteryof the faith:the Eucharist.This is not a twentieth-centurysecularist making a fanciful connection.The faithfulmade it seven centuriesago. A certainstyle of mystical devotionthat focused its intensity on theEucharist used images of glutting,sating, and eating to describe takingin the waferand wine. There were,in other words, gluttonsfor God in the multiplesenses "for"can have in thatphrase: theywanted to serve him (there is even a pun here) and eat him. Consider this thirteenth- centuryhagiography describing one Maryof Oignies, a mysticwho was especially devoted to the Eucharist: theholy bread strengthened her heart; the holy wine inebriated her, rejoicing her mind; theholy body fattened her.... Indeedshe felt all delectationand all savorof sweetnessin receivingit, notjust within her soul but even in hermouth.36

There is a witin thiskind of devotion.It takes the sin of gluttonyand consciously seeks to spiritualizeit, enlisting it and the gut in the serviceof God, miraculously, by eating him. The passage fromMary of Oignies remindsus thatgluttony is more thanjust chowingdown and gluttingto the point of sickness.There is more to it than the belly; there is also the palate. That Marywas fattedby eating Jesus was only part of the pleasure; it was also that he tasted good, "all delectationand all savor of sweetness."Gluttony has twochief forms that at timesraise demands inconsistent witheach other.One formis about ingestingexcessive quantities; the otherabout excessive refinementsin quality. The quantity/qualitydistinction was there in Gregorythe Great's taxonomy of gluttonyback in thesixth century: notjust eating too much,but also eatingtoo daintily.We mayeven suppose thatwhen Paul spoke tearfullyagainst those who made theirbellies theirGod he did not mean to exclude thosewho made the palate theirGod. The bellymetaphor seems big enough to include the devotees of qualityas well as thoseof quantity.Here the psychology and physiologyof alimentationhelps make the case. Consider thattaste alone is seldom, if ever,a pleasure entirelyunto itself.If it were, dietingwould hardlybe a challenge. The factis thatthere is littlepleasure in tastinga good tasteonly to have to spit it out before swallowing.The pleasure of a good taste remains to a large extent inchoate unless the substance bearing the good taste is swallowed.

Gluttony 103

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The bulimic helps make the point by swallowingfirst, thus completingthe pleasure cycleof ingestionand only then puttingthe process into reverse.37 No swallowing,and instead of pleasure we experience frustrationand disappointment. The analogy withcoitus interruptus suggests itself, but not swallowinggood tast- ing food mightbe even more displeasuring.So it is that the belly is a necessary conditionto the pleasure of the palate. Does the gluttonwho lives to gorge on large amounts have values more out of whack than the gluttonwhose chief goal in life is the experience of subtle delectationsand rarefiedpleasurings of the palate? Is one more a sinnerthan the other? More shallow? Do theyoffend in the same way? Both, it seems, can be accused of findingin fleshlysensation the desired end of theirexistence and in thissense both have equally given themselvesover to a false and verycorporeal god. But therehas been a historicalebb and flowbetween which style of gluttony- thequantitative or thequalitative-was mostoffensive, although both always mer- ited the scorn of the moralist. Hume makes the followingclaim: The moremen refine upon pleasure, the less they indulge in excesses of any kind; because nothingis moredestructive to truepleasure than such excesses. One maysafely affirm, thatthe Tartars are oftener guilty of beastly gluttony, when they feast on theirdead horses, thanEuropean courtiers with all theirrefinements of cookery.38

Hume introducesthe idea thatthe civilizingprocess bears a powerfulrelation to the nature of particularvices, especially, as here, to gluttony.Hume, of course, in thispassage is makingthe case forthe virtuesof refinementas these are secured bythe civilizingprocess. In brief,that process led to an increase in sensitivitiesof disgustand embarrassmentand an internalizationof norms of bodily decorum. You were no longer to fart,pick your nose, piss, or defecate in the presence of others.Food was to be eaten decorouslywithout slurping or burping.39By Hume's timeyou ate witha fork,not withyour hands; it was barbaricto wipe your hands or blow yournose on the tableclothor to spiton thefloor. Just two centuries earlier thesebehaviors were possiblewithout calling any special attentionto yourself.We already witnessedthe earlieststages of thisprocess when Langland opposed the privatizingof eating, preferringinstead the distributionaladvantages of large riotous feastswhere bones were tossed to the dogs and to the poor. That very limitingof eating to smaller more intimateand less festivegroupings helped in part to do the work of turningTartars into courtiers,although at some cost in social and psychicdislocation. But is Hume right?He admitsthat gluttony is not eliminatedby refinement. He seems to concede that European courtiersare gluttonseven with their refinements.More correctly,he admits thatcourtly gluttony is a functionof these refinements.What he is arguingis thatthe European courtlyobsession withdeli-

104 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions cate cuisine is not as gluttonousas are some Tartars chomping on their dead horses. Gluttonousit stillis but, in his estimation,paler in comparison. So what preciselyis the ground of comparison?At firstglance it appears to be merelya matterof quantitiesof food consumed, the notionof excess being more attracted to quantitythan to quality.What the Tartars lack in culinaryrefinement, they make up for in bulk, and thatvery bulk makes them more gluttonousthan the courtier.The clevernessof Hume's imageryreinforces this. He makes us see a hoard of Tartars each eating one newlyskinned, barely roasted horse that was either ridden to death or shot out fromunder him, "beastly"gluttons in more than one sense. The courtieron the other hand eats delicate morsels delicately, each morsel bearing no resemblance to the ingredientsthat made it up. But is there no excess there? Excess there surelyis, but it is not of bulk so much as in fleshlysensation, the courtingof fleshlydelight. What refinementsucceeds in doing is not eliminatinggluttony but doing just what refinementis supposed to do: make the pleasure more exquisite,but no less sinful,no less a confusion of the means forthe proper end. Refinementproceeds bya kind of condensationin whichmore punch is packed in a smallerpackage. But it is not just a matterof an excess of titillationand delectation. Hume knows,I suspect, although he is suppressingthe knowledge for the purpose of making his anti-Puritanicalpoint, that there can also be an excess of refinement itself,not just of the delicious and voluptuous sensationsit makes possible. Ex- cesses in refinementmight be a contradictionin terms,because true refinement should also know how to regulate itself,how never to engender vulgarity,how always to be decorous even if that means compromisingcertain rules of refinement in the interestsof its spiritand style.Yet refinementseems, inevitably,to fosterthe productionof itsown brand of vulgarityand excess thatis both engen- dered by it and parasiticalto it: for example, foppery,gourmetism, and certain kinds of priggishness. It is thus not altogetherclear thatexcesses of refinementcan't generate disgusts in the observer almost as great as the bestial excesses of devouring huge quantities.Compare forinstance a thick-necked,potbellied man stuffingthe con- tentsof a heaping plate of barbecue into his pink and sweatingface as he gropes for another beer, to a slender elegant man withan Anglophilicaccent, the kind affectedby the transatlanticliner set in thirtiesmovies, sniffing his wine glass and pronouncing the vintageto be superb. Both disgustmost of us. And depending on the social class or the body typeof the observerit is not at all clear who disgusts more. Both manifestineffable shallowness, even though the shallownesshas dis- tinctlydifferent styles. Both engage in a kind of unseemliness,and unseemliness is generallya matterof excess. One styleis gendered vulgar masculine,the other vulgar feminine;one low-class,the other pretentiouslyclaiming for itselfthe su- periorityof expertiseand highness,but oftentaking on the styleof an unintended

Gluttony 105

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions parody of highness. And both make theirgut their God, although the second, having adopted the idiom of excessive refinementhas the palate servingas his gut'svicar on earth. Both demonstratethat there is somethingvery dangerous about eating. It is hard not to offendGod or your fellowman or woman when you do it. And God and humanityseem to be takingoffense at roughlythe same thing:the unseemliness of gratifyingbodily urges. Eating is like other necessarybodily functions: dangerous in the extremeand best done out of sight.In factthe Brahmins have prettymuch adopted thiscourse.40 Like sex, eating must be hemmed in withall kinds of rituals and rules preciselybecause the process is so likelyto prompt disgust when viewed by others. Watch witha detached eye as someone, even a well-manneredsomeone, eats. It is not a thingof beauty.But if skilledwe can at least make feedingourselves relatively inoffensive, when, again as in sex, we agree to put ourselves at mutual riskby eating togetherso as not to make ourselves so vulnerableto the gaze of a non-eatingother. The civilizingprocess, the process that made eating riskierthan it already was, shiftedthe emphasis in gluttonyfrom a matterof excessive amounts to a matterof excessivelyconcentrated sensation. It was the civilizingprocess that in no small part helped make the verycivilized sensibility of David Hume possible. And at the same timethe advancingnotion of refinementshifted the moral focus of gluttonyfrom a disgustprompted by the perversionof proper spiritualvalues or byconsuming more than yourjust share amidststarving Lazaruses to a disgust for bad manners,for looking vulgar as you ate. In eithercase, unseemlinesswas at issue. But refinementheld the seeds of itsown undoing. Refinedcuisine might taste so good, so much betterthan dead horses,that it could work to prompt its refinedconsumers to excesses of quantityin the old gluttonousstyle. Hume, we mightnote, was quite portlyand appeared to enjoy his refinedcuisine in abun- dance. No wonder Hume's moral order rescued gluttonsfrom the thirdcircle of Hell where Dante had them wallowingin the mire like hogs. Hume, matching Christ'sharrowing of hell, led forththe gluttonsto a new order. If they were vulgar gluttons,their punishment was to be banished fromrefined company, but if theyindulged sensationin waysthat the new refinementanticipated and supported, then,as long as theydid not do so to the exclusion of other virtues,they were to be excused foran eternity. I confessthat I have been exaggeratingsomewhat in order to capture what is merelya shiftin emphasis. The core unseemlinessof gluttonyremained fairly constantthrough time and it was largelyPaul's versionof unseemlinessthat gov- erned. The pursuitof cheap thrills,of mere feel-goodsensation was sinfullyshal- low. Even Hume admitted that the vice of luxury,lust, and gluttony,is vicious "when it engrossesall a man's expence, and leaves no abilityfor such acts of duty and generosityas are required by his situationand fortune.' When gluttony and lust undermined benevolence and amiabilitythey were stillfor Hume vices.

106 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions But like the gluttonyof the classicaland premodernmoralist, the spiritualbank- ruptcyof Hume's gluttonybore an unseemlyconnection to the risk of worldly bankruptcy. Philology,the words people used to talkabout excesses in fleshlyand alimen- tarymatters, also provides evidence of gluttony'stransformation through time. Words like delicacy,gourmand, and luxurymoved fromdistinctly pejorative senses to fairlyneutral ones. Delicacyinitially meant the qualityof being addicted to sen- sual pleasure and encompassed both lust and gluttony,but mostly gluttony. Thomas Nashe (sixteenthcentury), for instance,discussed under the general heading of Delicacy,gluttony, luxury (meaning lust),sloth, and security.Delicacy was the excessiveimmersion in bodilypleasure-especially thatof the palate-to the exclusion of all else. But then slowlythe notion of delicacy got caught up in the civilizingprocess; it got refined.Instead of referencingsin it now referenced a delicacyof taste,a sensitivityto the elegant,to the pleasing,to refinedand subtle sensation, so that from its immoral beginningsin gorging,it ends, by the time Hume is writingin the firsthalf of the eighteenthcentury, marking feelings of modesty,the sense of propriety,and a delicate regard for the feelingsof others. Once delicacycomes to operate in the terrainof refinementrather than sin, however,that very refinement starts to spin offpejorative senses again, not, this time,pejorative in the old excessivestyle of gluttony,but in the new more refined one. Withoutquite givingup on the positivesenses of refinementit had come to acquire, delicacy begins to be colored by an insinuationof excess of a different cast than itsearly gluttonous one. Its new excess is one of exquisitedecadence, or of a kind of tender weakness and fragilitythat is gendered feminine.In other words, the historyof the word delicacytracks almost to a T the changes we noted in the shiftin gluttony'sfocus fromeating too much to caring too much about what you ate. Delicacy,like gluttony,got caught in the trammelsof the increasing sensitivityto disgust and embarrassmentthat was part of the civilizingprocess. Gourmandis less interesting,but it,too, movesfrom meaning gluttonto meaning,by the middle of the eighteenthcentury, someone who has a refinedexpertise in food, a gourmet,before driftingback again toward gluttony.The historyof the word luxurytells a similarstory, with the emphasis,however, more on lustthan on gluttony.It moved frombeing the proper word forwhat we call lustto meaning luxury as we know it-the general indulgence in costlyand superfluousfinery, includingfood. The move in each case is towarda "decriminalization"of gluttony, lesseningits moral stakes,and thena subtlerecriminalization of it at a lowerlevel, reflectingagain the driftfrom the unseemlinessof quantityto the unseemliness of excessive concern with quality.What was once a masculine sin (in medieval portrayalsof the sins gluttonyis masculine) becomes the effeminateexcesses of fastidiousness,delicacy, and persnicketiness.The eighteenthcentury in manyre- spects sees gluttonyat its low point as a sin. The new form of the gluttonyof quality,of hyperfastidiousness,was not,like the old gluttonyof quantity,a sin of

Gluttony 107

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions denyingone's humanityin favorof hoglikebestiality; it had become the sin of a particularform of human shallownessannexed to vanityand pride. Yet unlike pride, it had its roots in the shallownessof purelyphysical pleasure. If gluttonywas less urgentas a matterfor moralists in the eighteenthcentury, it stillwas of considerable politicalconcern. Politicsstill paid homage to gluttony as a sin; it became kind of a rallyingcry in fact.When Marie Antoinetterelegated the poor to theirwretched cakes while she enjoyed refinedmulticourse dinners, these new Lazaruses in theJacobin stylewere not so willingto trustGod to deal withMarie as He had withDives, nor, it should be added, did theytrust him to deal withthemselves any betterin the next life than He had in thisone. So they made theirearthly Paradise by ensuringthat Marie got her hell righthere. The lower orders,it seems,saw the consumptionof refinementto be no less offensive than the consumptionof barbaric and bestial excess. From their perspective,in other words,the transitionfrom a gluttonyof quantityto a fastidiousgluttony of qualitywas too subtleto notice. Yet therewas a difference.Marie conceded a lot more to the Parisian mob than Dives did to Lazarus. Production levels were higher; theyat least had theirgateaux, unrefinedthough theymay have been. We are now roughlyat the end of the eighteenthcentury. In the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies gluttony continued to recognize two styles,the one of excessive quantity,the other of excessive concern with quality,but these were altered to accommodate an even more secular world. Gluttonystill was a sin,and indeed a sin around which religio-politicalmovements could rally.This time it was not food so much as drink,demon rum. Temperance movementsmade the mouth and the gulletthe originatorsof moral and social offense.If revulsionand indignationat what and how the rich were eatingfueled the riotsof the Parisian poor, the thoughtof what and how much the poor were drinkingrevolted and terrifiedthe middle classes and the rich.The temperancemovement was a riotof the better-heeled,and in Americathey succeeded in ruiningconviviality for quite some time. In the Middle Ages no real distinctionwas made in the sinfulnessof indulging drink rather than food; the poor had precious littleof either. Class distinctions,however, helped give social and politicalstakes to the distinctionbe- tween food and drink in mattersof gluttonythat was already beginning to be made, as we saw, by the late sixteenthcentury. It is only recently,that is, post- World War II, thatthe food/drinkdistinction has ceased to mattermuch. With increasingsecularization, gluttony, in the second half of the twentieth century,was no longer the special provenanceof the preacher or the moralistas we conventionallythink of them.The new preacher was the doctor,the personal trainer,the dietitian,the aerobics instructor-shrinksfor the body and shrinks for the mind; and preachingcame to us in voice-oversin commercials,or in the mere sight of the models in them and other figuresof desirabilityand beauty purveyedin artand mass media. Despite our post-Freudianobsession with sexual- ity,we, like our medieval forebears,put food before sex, except we gave a rather

108 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions differentmeaning to theordering. Eating forthem meant festivity, jollity, conviviality,communion both sacred and profane, and then rolling in the hay (I am paintinga cartoon here, but not an altogetherfalse one). Food was its own plea- surefulend, but it was also foreplayfor the occasional lustyand lickerousfrosting on the cake. They ate because it was desirable and generated sexual desire as a consequence; we strategize,count calories,worry, and undermine our pleasure in eating so as not to undo what littledesirability we may be luckyenough to possess. Foodfirst then fornication described forthem the paradigmaticordering of pleasure; for us the same mottodescribes a regime of mortificationof the flesh foran overratedpayoff. The moral discourseof contemporarygluttony has ratherdifferent emphases than earlier styles.We speak of eating disordersand addictionsthat are classified as illnessrather than as sin. But in our cultureof healthin whichthe stateof one's body is feltto govern largelythe stateof one's soul, we have simplyattached sin to illness so that in the end we hold people to moralaccount for their illnesses. The alcoholic, the anorexic, the bulimic,the obese do not become unblamable just because theyare cared forby doctors and psychologistsrather than confessors and preachers. Of course, those who have eating disorders that make them fat ratherthan thinfare much worse in the moral calculus,much in the waya calorie of sugar from fruitis morallysuperior to a Twinkie calorie. We are thus more likelyto excuse the anorexic than the obese, to make her somewhatless culpable, partlyin deference to her tenderyears, partly in deferenceto her sex, but mostly because we are not as revoltedby her disorder untilits terminalstages. She also benefitsfrom our willingnessto allow thethin tragic possibility; the fat,in contrast, are relegated almostwithout exception to comedy,farce, and the grotesque. Bulimia, addictions,and binge eating are classic instancesof gluttony.An- orexia is slightlymore complex, but it captures all thatthe earlier moralistsheld to comprise the sin of gluttony.The alimentarycanal takes over; it dominates one's life; thoughtsof quantitybecome all consuming. The belly stillstands as God even if it has a minus sign in frontof it. Medieval moralistsunderstood this also. They discussed fastingunder the heading of gluttony,and while they approved of reasonable abstinencewithin recognized and regulated religiousrit- ual, theyblamed excessivefasting as unhealthyboth to body and soul. Moreover, theysuspected the compulsive and aggressivefaster of hypocrisy,of puttingon shows of sanctity:"thou fastethmuch in men's sightin order to be lean and pale, to seem ghostly[that is, spiritual].Thou art an hypocrite."42 Anorexia and bulimia show thatmodern formsof gluttonyare distinctlygen- dered. Both these disordersare almostexclusively the provenanceof teenage and college-age women. Althoughit has been suggestedthat the occasionallysuicidal fastingof certain medieval women saints had all the trappingsof anorexia, the ideal of abstinenceand mortificationof the fleshmade such behaviorsless exclu- sivelyfemale then than theyare today,even if women then pushed themselves

Gluttony 109

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions more toward self-destructionthan did males. In our age, the stylesof gluttony trackclass and gender divisions.Fat is as consistenta markerof lower class mem- bershipas thereis forboth sexes; itmay even be a betterpredictor than skincolor. The fat,really fat, are not likelyto be as educated, as wealthy,or as fromCalifor- nia, as the thin.Class predictsrather well whichgluttons will be gluttonsof quan- tityand whichwill be gluttonsof quality. Gluttonyoccupies the extremes-Rabelaisian gluttingas well as anorexia and saintlymortification of the flesh-because at either extreme the spirithas been turned over to the alimentary.Our only hope is the mean, the dull middle in which reasonableness governs. Even here we run into trouble. Reasonableness may once have been the answer,although we may surelyquibble on that point; but in a cultureobsessed withhealth, longevity, and beauty,reasonableness sounds less like the advice of the moralistor theologianthan of the doctor.The middle ground is no longerthe regionin whichthe spiritcan thrivefreed from the body's control;it is the veryground on whichalimentary obsessions are claimed to pro- duce the best resultsfor fleshly pleasures and ends. Perversely,after being down but not out in the mid-eighteenthcentury, gluttony has arisen to reaffirmthe place it held on the firstextant list of the capital sins some sixteenhundred years ago. Gluttonynow seems to be workingmostly in the serviceof pride,yet so much of modern pride is consumed by gluttonythat it is not always quite clear which vice is reallybringing home the bacon. Gula vincitomnia.

Is thereno remedyfor gluttony? Are we withouteffective resources to oppose our desires for oral and visceralgratification? Simple admonitionsto be temper- ate, the standard fare of the moralist,pale in the face of the desire theyoppose; mere advice rarelyconstitutes much of a threatto energeticvice. Yet,eventually, insistentadvice may end in creatingthe conditionsthat engender remorse. And that is a start,even though remorse alone is seldom adequate to its task. The metaphoricalrechewing that is remorse,the bitingagain of inwit,doesn't quite get it right.But in suggestingregurgitation, the workingover again of what we have already chewed and swallowed,remorse hintsof a more powerfuland ap- propriate sanction,one more purelytalionic, one that forcesthe alimentarycanal to sufferfor its desires. If the alimentarycanal, mouth and gut, offended,so mustit be punished. We need to feel our pain viscerallyand orally.We need nausea and the riskof regurgitationand diarrhea, the painful eliminationof sinful excess. It is disgust,that sickly sensation of our own defilement,of our own impurity, thatgives us some hope of resistingdesire bydoing the workof suppressingand repressing it. The result of this repression is the re-creationof a much more potent remorse than the kind generated discursivelyby advice. The disgust- originatingremorse, borne on a suffusionof self-loathing,really hurts; it makes

110 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions us sick. And to this unpleasantnesswe must also add the shame of knowingthat our fat and our fleshlyindulgence is very likelyto be even more disgustingto othersthan it is to ourselves.43

Notes

Thanks to Rob Bartlettand KathyKoehler. 1. From WilliamCombe (1742-1823), "The Glutton,"lines 9-16, in TheEnglish Dance of Death (London, 1815), 68. 2. So impossibleis it forus to conceive of a fatHamlet thatwhen Gertrudedeclares him "fatand scant of breath"during the duel withLaertes (5.2.290) editorshave come to the rescue withglosses to show thatfat meant sweatyand out of shape, but manifestly not fat: see Harold Jenkins'sspirited note in his edition of Hamlet(New York, 1981), 568-69. 3. David Hume, "Of Refinementin the Arts,"in Essays,Moral, Political, and Literary,based on the 1777 edition,ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, Ind., 1985), 268. 4. Reported in Mary Pipher,Reviving Ophelia: Saving theSelves of Adolescent Girls (New York, 1994), 184. 5. Evagrius of Pontus (d. c. 400); see Morton Bloomfield,The Seven Deadly Sins (Lansing, Mich., 1952), 59-60. 6. 1 John 2:16, in TheHoly Bible, KingJames Version (Apocrypha included), original elec- tronicversion, Oxford Text Archive.All subsequentbiblical citations are to thisonline edition. See Lester K. Little,"Pride Goes beforeAvarice: Social Change and the Vices in Latin Christendom,"American Historical Review 76, no. 1 (1971): 16-49, at 21. 7. Guillaume Perrault'sSumma de vitiiset virtutibus(thirteenth century) follows the Cas- sianic order beginningwith gluttony; see Bloomfield,Seven Deadly Sins, 124. 8. See Peter Brown, TheBody and Society(New York, 1988), 220-22. 9. GeoffreyChaucer "Pardoner'sTale" 498-504, in CanterburyTales, in The Worksof Geof- freyChaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson,2d ed. (Boston, 1957). 1 am committingwhat I consider a deadly sin in supplyingmodern spelling, where possible, and on occasion translations for the Middle English forms. 10. Quoted in Aquinas Summatheologiae 2a2ae. 148.3, trans.Fathers of the EnglishDomini- can Province,5 vols. (New York, 1947). 11. "Sermon against Gluttonyand Drunkennesse,"in HomiliesAppointed to Be Read in Churchesin theTime of Queen Elizabeth I, 1547-1571, ed. MaryEllen Rickeyand Thomas B. Stroup (Gainesville,Fla., 1968), 96. 12. Aquinas Summatheologiae 2a2ae. 148.3. 13. St. AugustineConfessions 10.31, trans.R. S. Pine-Coffin(Harmondsworth, Eng., 1961). 14. Aquinas Summatheologiae 2a2ae.148.5. 15. Humphrey Sydenham,Sermons upon solemn occasions (London, 1637), 106. 16. See OxfordEnglish Dictionary, 2d ed., s.vv."lickerous" and "lecherous." 17. See Rom Harr6 and RobertFinlay-Jones, "Emotion Talk Across Times," in The Social ConstructionofEmotions, ed. Rom Harr6 (Oxford, 1986), 220-33. 18. William Langland Piers thePlowman 5.360, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (New York, 1978). Subsequent referencesto thiswork are cited parentheticallyin the textwith the abbre- viationPP followedby passus and line numbers.

Gluttony 111

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19. See The Bookof Vices and Virtues:A Fourteenth-CenturyEnglish Translation of the Somme le roi ofLorens d'Orleans, ed. Nelson Francis(London, 1942), 52. 20. Alexander Barclay (1475?-1552), "The Second Eclogue of the Miseriesof Courtiers," lines 821-24, 829-30, in TheEclogues of Alexander Barclay, ed. Beatrice White (London, 1928), 51-106. For a powerfulexample of envy and indignationfor the sumptuous fare hypocriticalfriars claim forthemselves as theypreach of patientpoverty, see PP, B 13.25-1 10. 21. PP, B 10.57; the alliterationshows that the initialg of gnaw was pronounced (c. 1370). See Chaucer's "Summoner'sTale," in CanterburyTales, for a delightfultreatment of an oily friarwho discourses on the virtuesof the fastingregimen of friarsas he sups sumptuouslyat a townsman'sboard. 22. Chaucer "General Prologue" 345, in CanterburyTales. 23. Jacob'sWell: An EnglishtTreatise on theCleansing of Man's Conscience,ed. ArthurBrandeis (London, 1900), 143. 24. Thomas Nashe, ChristsTeares overJerusalem (London, 1593), 76v. 25. On this traditionof gluttony,see R. F. Yeager, "Aspectsof Gluttonyin Chaucer and Gower,"Studies in Philology81, no. 1 (1984): 42-55. 26. See Chaucer "The Pardoner'sTale" 463-76, in CanterburyTales; see also Barclay,"Sec- ond Eclogue," lines 538-92. TheBook of Vices and Virtues,53-55, makes the point that whereas God in Holy Church makes the blind sighted,the haltwhole, the insane sane; in the tavernthe devil does the opposite. 27. Barclay,"Second Eclogue," lines 627-28. 28. "Sermon against Gluttonyand Drunkennesse,"98. 29. Nashe, ChristsTeares, 76v. 30. Bookof Vices and Virtues,5 1. 31. Thomas Warton(1688?-1 745), "The Glutton,"lines 1-4, in Poemson SeveralOccasions (1748; reprint,New York, 1930), 177-79. 32. RobertBurton TheAnatomy of Melancholy 1.2.2.2, ed. FloydDell and PaulJordan-Smith (New York, 1938). Cates:choice fare,delicacies, dainties. 33. Nashe, ChristsTeares, 75v. 34. Phil. 3:18-19. 35. I suppose we could imagine a gluttonfighting a duel withthe cook who ruined his pte, but he would not be doing so as a gluttonif he did. 36. Cited in Caroline Walker Bynum, "Women Mysticsand EucharisticDevotion in the ThirteenthCentury," in Fragmentationand Redemption(New York, 1992), 119. 37. There are some smallexceptions, chewing tobacco forinstance. There stillis ingestion but it is not effectedin the gut and not byswallowing. One of the many vulgaritiesof chaw is the perversityof raisingexpectoration to a pleasure on a par withswallowing. 38. Hume, "On Refinementin the Arts,"271-72. 39. See NorbertElias, TheHistory of Manners, vol. 1 of TheCivilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott(New York, 1978). 40. See Louis Dumont, HomoHierarchicus: An Essayon theCaste System, trans. Mark Sains- bury(Chicago, 1970), and Mary Douglas, Purityand Danger (London, 1966). 41. Hume, "On Refinementin the Arts,"279. 42. Jacob'sWell, 143. 43. I devote an entirebook to the moral and social dimensionsof disgust;see WilliamIan Miller,The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).

112 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions