ABSTRACT
With the emphasis on ideas of social communion, there is a deliberate gesture toward a kind of spirituality, albeit secularised, in the construction of community. The role of community in sating its members both physically and socially is evident, with hunger, taste, and community creating a nexus toward a means of individual agency within the communal context. This chapter examines the ways in which social agency is achieved through the self-moderation of food and shared meals, but also the ways in which such agency is denied or abused from without, specifically by human intervention, although larger institutions such as church and government provide a broader context by focusing particularly on the works of Eliot, Gaskell, and Brontë. The connection of social and spiritual hunger with specific tastes and food consolidates the connection between literal and metaphorical renditions of hunger, and ideas of community and belonging.
