Pre-Raphaelite Food Politics or, Feasting on Desire:

John Everett Millais, Social Norms and Women

Abstract

Renowned for his infamous painting Christ in the House of his Parents (1849-1850) or for
The Tragic Story of Ophelia (1851-1852) which brought him domestic and international fame
during his lifetime as a British painter, John Everett Millais (1829-1896) is known as one of the
founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848), a group of young and idealistic artists
determined to instil vibrating energy and novelty into contemporary art which they considered
to have been stifled by the prevailing conventions of the Royal Academy. Millais’s works display
microscopic attention to pictorial realism and manifest an almost fetishistic attention to
photographic detail; and yet, it is despite this covert technique (or maybe particularly due to it!)
that Millais’ art manifests a certain politics springing from an exceptional daring in the way
his paintings function as genuine social and cultural parables. Therein, the current paper looks
into three of Millais’ paintings (namely, Bridesmaid (1851), Isabella (1868), and The
Captive (1882)), as mirrors that reflect and challenge while obliquely commenting on and
criticising Victorian social norms (particularly those related to gender, gender roles, binary
oppositions and desire) through the depiction of food. Hence, the main focus of the paper is not
merely uncovering Millais’ food aesthetics and the way he uses food as a subject of aesthetic
interest but rather looking into Millais’ food politics (and poetics) and the way food becomes a
vehicle for expressing deeper societal concerns, class distinctions, moral lessons, and cultural
exchanges.