"Nothing is more pleasant than to see a pretty woman, her napkin well placed under her arms, one of her hands on the table, while the other carries to her mouth, the choice piece so elegantly carved"
About this Quote
It reads like a compliment, but it’s really a manifesto for control. Brillat-Savarin isn’t describing hunger; he’s staging a scene. The “pretty woman” is framed less as a person than as the centerpiece of a well-run tableau: napkin tucked “under her arms,” one hand disciplined on the table, the other performing calibrated pleasure. Even the “choice piece” arrives pre-approved, “so elegantly carved” that the act of eating becomes an extension of someone else’s craftsmanship and social order.
That lawyerly eye matters. A jurist’s world is rules, posture, procedure, and the quote smuggles those values into the dining room. Etiquette becomes a kind of soft governance: the body trained, desire permitted only when mediated by technique. The pleasure he claims to witness is inseparable from surveillance. We’re invited to enjoy not just beauty, but propriety made visible.
The subtext is gendered and unmistakably of its time. Early 19th-century French gastronomy was consolidating itself as a cultural power, and with it the idea that taste is a marker of class. Women, often excluded from the public institutions that produced “taste,” are here admitted on strict terms: as the aesthetic proof that refinement has succeeded. The erotic charge is real, but it’s domesticated, routed through napkins and carving knives. Pleasure, in Brillat-Savarin’s world, is safest when it’s choreographed.
That lawyerly eye matters. A jurist’s world is rules, posture, procedure, and the quote smuggles those values into the dining room. Etiquette becomes a kind of soft governance: the body trained, desire permitted only when mediated by technique. The pleasure he claims to witness is inseparable from surveillance. We’re invited to enjoy not just beauty, but propriety made visible.
The subtext is gendered and unmistakably of its time. Early 19th-century French gastronomy was consolidating itself as a cultural power, and with it the idea that taste is a marker of class. Women, often excluded from the public institutions that produced “taste,” are here admitted on strict terms: as the aesthetic proof that refinement has succeeded. The erotic charge is real, but it’s domesticated, routed through napkins and carving knives. Pleasure, in Brillat-Savarin’s world, is safest when it’s choreographed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Food |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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