Anorexia Mirabilis Decoded: Rereading Female Corporeal Consumption In Dickens’s Angelic Daughters
Anorexia Mirabilis Decoded: Rereading Female Corporeal Consumption In Dickens’s Angelic Daughters

Summary/Abstract: This article makes a deconstructionist reading of anorexic women in Dickens. For this purpose, three of his novels are examined: Dombey and Son, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit. The article challenges certain feminist claims of women in Dickens being sacrificed at the expense of men and proposes a conscious postponed consumption of commodities on the part of the women through marriage. The analysis is effectuated on the basis of comparing data from the novels in question, newspapers, medical studies and Victorian culture reviews. The results ascertain the employment of feminine stratagems in promoting the body politics that help Dickens’s angelic daughters to obtain the best husband for them and thus establish the successful patriarchal woman.

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