The Dinner Party

Everyone loves a party, and when food is involved who could possibly turn it down?

Dinner Parties have been popular since the medieval era, and perhaps even before. After this, the visual appearance of food became important for the host. Many middle-class Victorian families used dinner parties as an opportunity to display their status and wealth. A typical Victorian dinner party was obsessed with the visuals, from the table plan to the food. In this post, I wish to answer the question: Why was the visual aspect of food so important at dinner parties?

Dena Attar suggests the mid-Victorian era was "a period when the visual appearance of food took precedence over considerations of taste or nutritious value" (qtd.Wilson:127). In Household Management (1861), Isabella Beeton expresses this in her dinner party plans. Her table plans illustrate the table as a blank canvas ready to be dressed. She places the different courses symmetrically around the table (right). It is not until the second and third course that the table becomes vaster with 6 dishes opposed to 4. In the diagram on the right, Beeton gives a descriptive instruction of where things should be placed. With regards to the 'Third Course', the accompaniments to the main part of the dessert are centred whilst the main desserts are set out around the edge of the table symmetrically. The setting out in this way illustrates how diners were encouraged to help themselves, and of course covering the table with impressive amounts of good food would have given the hosts a way to exhibit their expensive tastes.

Google Image

A novel which illustrates the Victorian Dinner Party at work is in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend (1865) and the Veneering's Dinner Party:

"The great looking-glass above the sideboard reflects the table and the company. Reflects the new Veneering crest, in gold and eke in silver, frosted and also thawed, a camel-of-all-work." (11)

This dinner party is clearly to show their new found wealth. This is illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr (1870) in the painting below.

Victorian Web Image

As a paratext to the original text, this image gives an insight into what Dickens believes is seen through the ‘looking-glass’. The Veneering’s dinner party expresses a similarity with Beeton that the dinner party is a performance. This illustrates Attar's notion that 'appearance took precedence' because we see them drinking wine which illustrates wealth and the centrepiece of the table on the left of the painting is extravagant. Furthermore, the quote above illustrates a visual wealth with regards to the ‘gold’ and ‘silver’.

Before this entry I was aware that the Victorians enjoyed parties but not to this extent. It was interesting to find out that ‘appearance took precedence’ at the dinner party with its expensive foods and centrepieces. Overall, I have found out that for Victorian hosts the dinner party was set out as a performance of their wealth.

Works Cited

Allingham, P.V. Victorian Web Image- “The Veneering Dinner Party by Sol Eytinge, Jr” Victorian Web (1870) <http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/eytinge/2.html.> Accessed 10/02/2015

Beeton, I. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. (2008)

Dickens, C. Our Mutual Friend. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited (1997)

Google Images- “Dinner Party” Accessed 10/02/2015

Wilson, A. (ed) Food and Society: The Appetite and The Eye. Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press (1991)