Madagascar and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie Bucket is a floating signifier living "on the edge of a great town" , of starvation, of childhood, and by the end of the story, on the edge of his social class (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 1964. 13). Charlie is a willing participant in a capitalist competition, and against the laws of probability, a single "damp and dirty" (46) 50p throws him into the path of potential corruption. "Dirty" (46) money changes the dynamics which have framed the Buckets social composition, and Roald Dahl's narrative leaves the reader poised to ponder how Charlie will manage the capitalist transformation into which he is about to catapult his family. Exercising the force of his dictatorship, Mr Wonka appropriates the home and intentions of the Bucket household, coercing the beguiled Charlie and Grandpa Joe, to push "three old people who were still petrified with fear" into a world of global capitalism. In the words of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels'  "The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation" (Communist Manifesto 1848). Furthermore, 

"The whole world seemed suddenly to be caught up in a mad chocolate-buying spree...In one city, a famous gangster robbed a bank of a thousand pounds and spent the whole lot on Wonka bars" (30).

Mr Wonka obscures behind "frosted glass windows" (25), the cultural and ethical truth concerning the identity of the Oompaloopas; appropriating first the natural resource of Loompaland, then enslaving the natives: "I shipped them all over here, every man woman and child in the Oompa-Loompa tribe. It was easy, I smuggled them over in large packing cases" (68). Occasionally, Wonka's personal 'mask of anarchy' slips, betraying his questionable morality (Romanticism an Anthology, 2000, Percy Bysshe Shelley 1819). 

Accept "the present" of  Wonka's chocolate empire and submit to being 'groomed', or try and see through Wonka's opaque dictatorship, especially for the sake of the Oompa-Loompas (130); this is Charlie Bucket's philanthropical dilemma....

....44 years later on an island in the Indian Ocean....

....Madagascar provides the backdrop for the development of Madecasse, brainchild of Tim McCollum and Brett Beach, former Peace Corps volunteers on the island. Initiated in 2008, Madecasse aims to create a chocolate factory at the capital city of Antananarivo:

 The chocolate is processed in Madagascar and all the packaging and ingredients are sourced locally, creating four times more prosperity for the local people (Madecasse 2008).

Madecasse aims to "keep more economic benefit within the island nation". Their achievements have earned Madecasse a position in 'The World's Top 50 Most Innovative Companies' ("The Fast Company" Magazine, March, 2011, p118). The philanthropic intention of Madecasse is to "strike at the root cause of poverty" in Madagascar (Madecasse, Executive Summary, February 2014, p1), by respecting and complying with ethical standards of business development.

Bibliography

Dahl, R.                         Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.   Great Britain: Puffin Books,1973.

www.madecasse.com  Madecasse: "Executive Summary", February, 2014.

Marx, K. And F. Engels. “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, Selected Works.Vol.1,                                                             Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp 98-137.
Wu, D.                                Romanticism: an anthology 2nd Edition.   Oxford: Blackwell,                                                       2000.
www.fastcompany.com    "The Fast Company", 2011.

"Go mad together in community" (Come to Milton Keynes, Paul Weller, 1985)

The equation for a successful community cookbook has three components: donors who share recipes, volunteers who collaborate on production of the book, and consumers who donate money to purchase a copy.

    

In 1955 The Women's Institute had acquired 40 years of operational service under its apron, and under the editorship of Gwynedd LLoyd it was deemed expedient to provide a collection of "recipes used in bygone days by the housewife in her historical and traditional role as guardian of the family's health" (Lotions and Potions 2). In her helpful historical overview, the syntax of Gwynedd's 'Foreword' smoothly slips the language of "salves and unguents" (3) into commodities; however, she cautions against the use of "'hogges grease', ...as it may have the effect of stimulating the growth of superfluous hair" (6)!

Recipes include "Restoration Jelly" (32), and "Primrose ointment" (20). The objective of all the recipes is to lighten, whiten, smooth, tone and brighten, to be uplifting and revitalising. The kitchens and drawing rooms of Gwynedd's W.I. contributors were no-doubt flush with shared remedies, floral scents and spices of rosewater, lavender, rosemary, mace, cloves and cinnamon. Perhaps a cup of "Cowslip Tea for Giddiness and Nervous Excitement" (18) might restore order and calm to the 1955 hearth and home. 

I purchased a second-hand copy of Lotions and Potions at Salcombe Regis Country Fair, Devon, in 1968 for 10p; the life of the Community Cookbook often exceeds the life of its contributors, but their philanthropic intentions live on.    

The Cornmillers express gratitude in the preface to The Traditional Cornmillers Guild Book of Recipes, for the "opportunities to meet and to discuss matters and problems of mutual interest" (3). A huddle of 'dusty' millers ruminating over a quern stone about the "aesthetic quality" (3) of flour is quaint, but their discussions have been fruitful. In the 27 years since its publication, consumer interest in "unadulterated stoneground meals and flours" (3) has grown apace with concern for living healthier lifestyles.  
I purchased my copy of the Cornmiller's book at Otterton Mill, Devon, 1988; where bread is heavenly.

Bibliography

Greenhow, D.  The Traditional Cornmillers Guild Book of Recipes.   England:                                               Devonshire Press, 1988.

Lloyd, G.  Lotions and Potions.  London: WI Books, 1955.

Weller, P.  "Our Favourite Shop".   Polydor Records, 1985.

"Let them starve" (Evening Standard June 9th 1914)

Wormwood Scrubs 

Holloway 

Strangeways 

The prisons above represent some of the penal institutions into which Suffragettes were prepared to risk being incarcerated during their fight for a "fully enfranchised voice" (March Women March Lucinda Hawksley 2013. 247). Some sixty years later, the voice of Marian MacAlpin in Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman (1976) echoes similar pangs of desire for, autonomy and control over her personal destiny.

Food refusal  is employed by members of the Suffragette movement as a protest against their imprisonment, drawing media and political attention to their cause. The impending institution from which Atwood's character Marian MacAlpin desires to liberate herself, is marriage to Peter; her sacrifice of nourishment, manifests her feelings of powerlessness over everything except her mortal frame: "'God,' she thought to herself, 'I hope it's not permanent; I'll starve to death!'" (The Edible Woman 186).                 

Dorset Hall

At a different coalface of Women's Suffrage in leafy SW19, Rose Lamartine Yates of Dorset Hall, hosted fundraising afternoon teas on the lawn. WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union) branded Tea, Jam and Chocolate would be on sale at the Teas, Public Meetings and in the WSPU Shops, to philanthropically help finance the Suffrage movement, and disturb the illusion that suffrage was a privilege of the bourgeoisie, with time on their hands and money to spare. 

Hawkesley argues further that  when "women of the Garrett and Fawcett families took up the issue of female suffrage, the movement would begin to be associated with upper-class, often aristocratic women, yet in the early 19th century this was not the case. The earliest exponents of gender equality came not from the drawing rooms of Mayfair but from the factory floors of those towns most affected by the Industrial Revolution" (March Women March 17). 

Marion Wallace-Dunlop initiated the 'hunger-strike' in 1909, when she abstained from food for 91 hours.

              

Marion Wallace-Dunlop            Lady Constance Lytton      Lilian Lenton   

Under the pseudonym, Jane Warton, Lady Constance Lytton wanted an authentic experience of prison treatment; she was "suspicious that she was being treated differently from her working-class peers" (155). Historian Jane Purvis provides this insight: "Warton was held down by wardresses as the doctor inserted a four-foot-long tube down her throat. A few seconds after the tube was down she vomited all over her hair, her clothes and the wall" (qtd in March Women March 156). 

The philanthropic intention behind the hunger-strike lies in how the act of self-sacrifice symbolically embraces the universal suffrage of women. The doctor who attempts to force feed Jane Warton "yelled furiously that if she vomited on him again he would 'feed [her] twice'" (157); thus food becomes punishment. Lady Constance died two years later.

The near death of Lilian Lenton lead to the Cat and Mouse Act in 1913, amid fears over negative publicity concerning the treatment of imprisoned Suffragettes. Before the Act was hastened through Parliament, however, a more degrading tactic was adopted by prison authorities to subvert the intentions of hunger-strikers: "many women were force-fed rectally, turning the already terrifying practice into rape" (157).     

Subconscious reaction to male oppression became a form of conscious protest, and a paradoxical weapon of philanthropy. Marian MacAlpin's food refusal mimics the notion of self-sacrifice as a means to escape oppression, ritualised by her Suffragette forebears. Irony judders when Duncan muses: "I'd prefer to be fed through a main artery. If only I knew the right people. I'm sure it could be arranged..." (237).     

Bibliography

Attwood, M.  The Edible Woman.  Great Britain: Virago Press, 1976.

Hawksley, L.  March Women March.  London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 2013.

   

Willow weaving

Under warm Suffolk sunshine I watched an artisan weaving Willow; his labours produced my favourite basket, one that lights an approving smile from the check-out staff at my local Co-op. Handles and leather wear and crack, mellowed by hands and transport, thus    baskets, hampers and panniers acquire even more charm when distinguished by the life      they've lived. 

My Suffolk basket

Under another warm sun, by a riverbank, the Water Rat and the Mole were having a small adventure:

Hold hard a minute, then!' said the Rat. He looped the painter through a ring in his landing stage, climbed up into his hole above, and after a short interval reappeared staggering under a fat, wicker luncheon basket. (The Wind in the Willows 1908. 8).

The Water Rat expects the unexpected company of the Otter and the Badger, he embraces their fellowship in a community lunch, whose scent might indeed be blown by the wind through the woven willow of his basket:

"coldhamcoldtonguecoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwichespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater- "(8). Grahame's portmanteau of words listing the food items suggests the philanthropic capacity of the wicker receptacle: a picnic hamper is seldom packed for one.  

In Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows a Children's Classic at 100 the serosity of the Water Rat's lifestyle is described in the following terms: "His boat is the perfect nature-perfecting agency through which he can realise this life, conveying him and his lunch hamper to areas of his own choosing, in his own time" (Jackie C.Horne and Donna R.White, 2010. 31).

The fluidity of Grahame's syntax emphasises the rafting nature of the Water Rat's life and attitude to casual encounters, for whose alimentary needs he is mindful. The social cohesion of his floating feast, marks the spirit of philanthropy with which Grahame endows the character of the Water Rat.

    

Bibliography

Grahame, K.                        The Wind in the Willows.   New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,                                                     1908.

Horne, J.C and Donna, W.   Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows a Children's Classic                                                 at 100.   United Kingdom: Scarecrow Press Inc., 2010.

The Social Cohesion of Food - by way of Introduction

This blog begins on the streets of London, where each night soup is supplied to the homeless; and this sets the tone for all the subsequent posts of Philanthropic Food in its exploration of the Social Cohesion of Food. Philanthropic Food investigates how food is used as an agency of positive change, drawing communities together. 

In SW19 there are school children who lack food! As a school governor I witnessed a swarm of students gather around one of their peer group in the hope of getting one of the Dairy-lea Dunkers from the pack he opened. It would be funny if they were not seriously hungry; but it was commonplace for students to arrive at school having eaten no breakfast. 

  

Philanthropic Food is not just a blog about giving food to the hungry though, it asks important questions about the ethics of food distribution, about the moral responsibilities, and about how to become an active member of society.The literary texts woven into the posts help to illustrate how the question of philanthropic food is addressed in narrative forms; the big question is how does one make the transition from being a passive reader into being an active philanthropist? 

This blog asks the question 'which type of food philanthropist are you?'

Where do you volunteer? 

What do you know about food politics?

How are you an ethical consumer?

When do you share?

Who would you give you last Dairy Lea Dunker to? 

....Please read on to consider what it is that you can do.

Fetefulness

The Chair of the W.I accepted my offer to help at the Devon 'Pie Fete', but I was unaware of the hierarchical toes upon which I was about to step. Fetes, Fairs, Fayres, Fests and Festivals; I was as naive as Lucia thinking that "the fete would be an admirable occasion for entering the arena of activities" (Mapp and Lucia 17).
For I too was an interloper, merely a transient resident of the village; I was a female trespasser and my urban ideology could be scented at a thousand paces. 

Beneath canvas, in open fields, playgrounds, church halls and libraries, a trestle table resplendent with cake simply refuses to be ignored; it will simultaneously satisfy both your Freudian pleasure principle and at least one of the three Virtues: Charity. The economy of cake has built church roofs, floors, organ lofts and pews....

It began with one of the pleasantest French imports to form a marriage with the British cake, the Fete. 

La Fete a St. Cloud 1775-8 
 Jean Honore Fragonard

Henrietta of England staged legendary Fetes in the 17th century at St Cloud.   

Horatio Walpole

Taking up his quill in 1752 Horatio Walpole caught the French Zeitgeist and wrote to his friend Sir Horace Mann about the Fete  phenomenon. Of Lord and Lady Coventry Walpole gossiped: "They were pressed to stay for the great Fete at St. Cloud", and thus returning movers and shakers anglicised La Fete on the English side of La Manche.

So, I crossed the threshold of the village hall to serve tea and cake from behind the division of the trestle table. It is a rare man who ventures behind the trestle table, for men, along with cakes which fail to pass stringent 'committee' quality control standards, are not infrequently requisitioned to the back kitchen. I busily swept up scattered cake crumbs and criticisms about the portion control of my cake slices.

The Women's Institute in my London home town has an enormous waiting list, and this is providential, if Georgie's caution to Lucia is correct: "I wonder if you're wise to join the committee" (Mapp and Lucia). Committee membership can be a poisoned chalice; one which has often been passed around a circuit of 'same olds, until somebody yields.
Lucia prepares a tableau to receive the honour, and deceive the giver, of her invitation to 'join the committee', within the "Shakespearean scope" (Mapp and Lucia) of Perdita's garden. The illusion is complete, she would be chanced upon cherishing Pepito's poetry; enter stage left Daisy Qantock: "...so good of you to see me, and I'll come to the point at once. The Elizabethan fete, you know. You see it won't be till August. Can't we persuade you, as they say, to come amongst us again? We all want you: such a fillip you'd give it" (17).
A wiser Lucia might have anticipated the sting in Daisy's tail: "My dear, none of us thought of asking you to be Queen Elizabeth" (17); Lucia was still not 'one of them'. 
The spotlight refocuses on Lucia when, like a moth to a flame, she cannot resist the lure of the camera lens: "...the clic of cameras throughout the whole performance had been like the noise of cicalas in the south...(Lucia was most indulgent), and she was photographed at her piano and in Perdita's garden, and musing in an arbour..." (Mapp and Lucia 88).

I too turned to camera, when the photographer from the local newspaper pointed his lens, and I crunched the hierarchical toes of my W.I 'country cousins'; a 'fillip' I was not!

Village Pie Fest 2011

Village Pie Fest 2010 

Bibliography

Benson, E.F.  Mapp and Lucia.  London: Penguin, 2004.

Fragonard, J.H.  Le Fete a St. Cloud.  Banque de France, Paris.

The Women's Institute.  www.thewi.org.uk

Walpole, H.  Letters of Horace Walpole.  London: Harrap, 1926.

Soup Run Gleanings

I joined my local Soup Run group, and this is what I gleaned....

Gleaning No.1: the distinction between soup and Soup Run soup.

"Great care must be taken to respect the dignity of our 'clients'...both their teeth and digestive health are questionably robust,...so prepare finely diced vegetable soup"

Mindful of the advice I set about sauteeing finely sliced chestnut mushrooms in unsalted butter according to Gleaning No.2: cook seasonably without seasoning. 

Gleaning No.3: Soup Run linguistics, the dignity of the 'homeless' is addressed by the syntax 'our clients'. This pasteurization of the lexis infers an attempt by Soup Runners to endear themselves to the undomiciled. 
My repertoire of Soup Run recipes remained at an unimaginative mushroom, vegetable and tomato, so it was time to leave the kitchen, get in the minibus and meet the 'clients'.

"always wear the surgical gloves, and don't speak to the 'clients'"

The paradox of Gleaning No.4 is embedded in its antithesis to my objective; the chasm between me and the clients was widening. Distributing soup to people I should neither touch nor talk to constricted every emotional knot in my body like a gastric band. I was wearing Blake's "mind forged manacles", of twenty-first century disposable sterile latex. 
Soup Run politics are complex, with an infrastructure and remit extending beyond tea and sympathy. Alexis Soyer crossed a continent to dirty his hands at the Crimea, and his example is echoed now by Soup Runners in latex, nitrile rubber, vinyl and neoprene. 

Having subverted a Westminster Council by-law to ban Soup Runs in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics, current issues of concern for Soup Runners include the problem of 'Gangs' in white vans. Circulating around the Soup Run sites, vans lure 'rough sleepers' in with the promise of work. Soup Runners distribute leaflets in Polish and Romanian to inform Asylum Seekers and beggars of the potential risks to their health and safety if they accept the non-specific 'work' being touted. Our 'clients' sail close to virtual slavery in their quest for a better life.    

Soyer attempts to coerce the 'haves' to improve the welfare of the 'have-nots': "He badgered his well-heeled friends for subscriptions. He organised an exhibition ...under the title of 'Soyer's Philanthropic Gallery" (The Selected Soyer "Soup for the Poor"1849).

                                           
"The Modern Housewife" (Alexis Soyer 1849) provides a clear picture of Soyer's social conscience about the policies of food distribution and his inventiveness towards finding solutions to the problems of food scarcity, indeed: "A new challenge was needed, and he found it in the streets of London" ("Soup for the Poor"). Soyer's letters 'To the Editor' of the Times take the form of advertorials; he infers that the "benevolent intentions" of the Editor indicate the publication's endorsement of his ambitions. Soyer's persuasive language echoes the persuasive techniques he employs, using The Times as a distribution vehicle for "immediate publicity"  of the recipes he wishes to share ("M. Soyer's Kitchen And Soup For The Poor"). 

Driving his philanthropic ideologies further forward, Soyer seeks to convince the readers by implied endorsements from "noblemen, members of Parliament, and several Ladies" ("The Receipt for Soup No.1"). It is to be assumed that the bourgeoisie reader is impressed by the influence of educated and elegant people of both genders from the upper classes.
Soyer is an unashamed marketeer, promoting both his "subscription"  and the "benevolent contributors" who are sponsoring his highly proactive and "simple plan" to create "one of those kitchens" ("The Receipt for Soup No.2").  

Soyer aspired that: "no one, it is hoped, hereafter, would hear of the dreadful calamity of starvation" ("The Receipt for Soup No.1"), but social inequalities continue to provide a platform of need from which his ideologies have thrived into the twenty-first century. I hope Soyer would approve of the current Soup Run Code of Conduct and feel that we have advanced his mission.      

Bibliography

Langley, A.                                         The Selected Soyer.  Bath: Absolute Press, 1987.    

Wu, D., Ed.                                         Romanticism An Anthology Fourth Edition.    "London"                                                                  Songs of Experience, William Blake, 1794.   England:                                                                        Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.