‘I’ll Gobble You Up’: Gender and Consumption in T. S. Eliot’s poetry

Part of TMR's special issue on food - 'A (Movable) Feast of Modernism'.

Growing consumerism in the twentieth century certainly influences imagery of food and eating in Eliot’s poetry, but this consumption is necessarily intertwined with images of sexual and gendered violence. Women are consumers but are also objects to be consumed. The desire to ‘gobble […] up’ food, media, and sex is encouraged by a growing consumerist culture but, in Eliot’s poetry, represents a double-edged sword for the women who must both eat and be eaten.