Reading 3 Good health and a healthy appetite go hand in hand in Austen’s novels. Her
heroines—when flourishing—eat in moderation and without worrying too much about
what they are eating and what they are not. Catherine Morland, the youthful, zestful
heroine of Northanger Abbey, is blessed with “a good appetite” and eats just what she
wants to, when she is hungry.
The heroines good constitutions—and well-regulated appetites—are also
conjoined with a taste for fresh air and exercise. Often, they are determined walkers,
visiting friends and neighbors on foot, enjoying scenic strolls (Catherine) or traipsing,
like the best ofthe Romantics, through the natural world (Marianne Dashwood).
Elizabeth Bennet thinks nothing of walking three miles “in [...] dirty weather to see
her cold-ridden sister marooned at Netherfield, “crossing field after field at a quick
pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity, and
finding herself at last within view of the house, with weary ankles, dirty stockings,
and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise.” We might go so far to claim that
appetite, exercise, and mental health are the three points of a Jane Austen “well-being
triangle”—if any one of these is lost, the others suffer, too, and overall well-being is
compromised. When out of sorts, her heroines begin to display a more problematic
relationship with food.
For example, when Marianne in Sense and Sensibility begins to pine for
Willoughby, her appetite dwindles and she becomes thin and wan, losing her youthful
bloom. Catherine, too, loses her appetite when she finds she is banished from
Northanger Abbey—“She tried to eat [﹒﹒﹒] but she had no appetite, and could not
swallow many mouthfuls”—a situation that continues back at home where she
appears—from her parents’ point of view—to turn her nose up at their ordinary
breakfast: “I am sure I do not care about the bread. It is all the same to me what I eat.”
While both Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse—both of whom have healthy
egos to match their healthy appetites—flourish throughout their respective narratives,
two others, Anne Elliot (in Persuasion) and Fanny Price (in Mansfield Park)—cach
unhappy and marginalized in her own way 一 have to work their way toward wellbeing, rediscovering their appetites (in the broadest sense) along with their sense of
self as they also begin to (re﹣﹚bloom physically and emotionally.
【題組】32. When an Austen heroine arrives at the “well-being triangle,” she ,
(A) seeks social support.
(B) faces her mid-life crisis.
(C) bypasses the middle income trap.
(D) reaches her anger threshold.
(E) matures into a well-rounded character.