‘I’d Dream of Feasts’

Anne Benne’s chapter is a study of food culture in The Hidden Hand or, Capitola the Madcap (1859) by E. D. E. N. Southworth, which is rightfully acknowledged to be one of the author’s best works, and one of the most provocative novels of the nineteenth century. When recounting her adventures in New York City as a cross-dressed newspaper boy to her new guardian, Capitola defends her transgressive behavior by emphasizing her hunger and desperation: ‘I’d dream of feasts and the richest sort of food, and of eating such quantities!’ Usually categorized as a sensational novel within the larger sentimental tradition of mid-century novels, The Hidden Hand might be more productively read as a dual outlaw narrative. The work features one self-identified outlaw, Black Donald, who plots his adventures and crimes around a heavily laden kitchen table surrounded by his devoted band of outlaws. The feasts he provides his followers ensure their continued loyalty as well as confirm his identity. Black Donald, alone among all the characters, recognizes the other, dual outlaw in the novel, Capitola, who is not the demure and pious heroine of most sentimental novels. Capitola has known hunger; she has had to shift her very identity from a genteel young girl to an enterprising newspaper boy surrounded by a gang of boys in order to survive in the city. Southworth’s novel is an exploration of the power that food and feasting has in relation to power dymanics in nineteenth-century literature and culture. Capitola’s story is that of an outlaw narrative, and Southworth thus removes the need to force this character into the mold of the typical nineteenth-century sentimental heroine and allows readers to explore the ways her character subverts gender identity as well as definitions of a healthy community.