Spilling the Beans

Exploring the intersection of food, sexuality, and commerce, this book delves into late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century women's fiction. It examines how food serves as both a source of pleasure and a commodity, intertwining themes of bodily and economic productivity with societal expectations. Through the lens of novels, conduct books, and popular medicine, it reveals the complex and often unsettling relationships between consumption and identity during this period, challenging established critical perspectives.