ABSTRACT
In her book concerning representations of the female body in Victorian literature, Helena R. Michie writes that its archetypal heroine “laughs, flirts, and presides over presumably empty plates” and is rarely depicted “in the act of either eating or starving” (1987, 12). Michie argues that “hunger, which figures unspeakable desires for sexuality and power, becomes itself silenced by Victorian euphemism, [and] a metonymic chain is set in motion where hunger is displaced from the ‘center’ of literature and culture” (1987, 13). 1 This hungerless Victorian woman seems to have a distant daughter in the figure of the communist Super Woman. Polish Socialist Realist films often depict women building communism, riding tractors and delivering speeches at party meetings, yet they are almost never shown devouring a sizable meal either in their homes or at factory cafeterias. Unlike their husbands, boyfriends, bosses and fathers whose “healthy appetite” and unsophisticated table manners signify their “appropriate” class and gender identity, socialist heroines seem to transcend these carnal calls.
