"A cook in a jacket, a short petticoat and sabots, brought my supper: to wit—some meat, nature unknown, served in an odd and acid, but pleasant sauce; some chopped potatoes, made savoury with, I know not what: vinegar and sugar, I think: a tartine, or slice of bread and butter, and a baked pear."
Jane Eyre is a book about a woman who hates feeling comfortable. Every meal that passes her lips is full of gravel and self-sufficiency. Sometimes she drinks tea, but more often than not she turns it down suspiciously, for what if within the tea someone had secretly placed the bonds of servitude?? Here is every meal she begrudgingly eats before running away into the hills.
Wuthering Heights is the story of a group of people who eat the most miserable meals imaginable, and cannot experience love as a result. Sometimes they have tea, but more often they are merely offered it, and decide they are too furious to have tea, and die instead. Here is every meal the characters of Wuthering Heights almost eat before being interrupted by sex-rage and dying.
"There's one," she said.
"Where?" she said. "I don't believe you."
"Right over there," she insisted. "Look at him."
She looked. "Well," she said after a moment, "I suppose you're right."
"It was a little difficult to find him," she said.
"A little," she agreed.
"But the important thing is that we found him."
"We sure did," she said.
- A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Flannery O'Connor
1. Let me fix you, Thorin Oakenshield. (cue the Coldplay montage)
(I do not take spoiler concerns about The Hobbit seriously--HE FINDS A MAGIC RING AND THERE IS A DRAGON--but obviously I'm going to talk about what happens in this movie.)
