Sweets are constantly consumed in George Eliot’s short story, “Brother Jacob.” In the opening chapter, Mr. David Faux convinces his brother, Jacob, that he is able to turn the guineas he has stolen from their mother into candies. David does this in order to keep Jacob from revealing his secret: that he intends to take their mother’s money and use it to help him create a new life for himself in the West Indies where he believes he can improve his lot in life and become something more than a confectioner. Though “David chose his line [of work] without a moment’s hesitation; and with a rashness inspired by a sweet tooth . . . the tooth lost its relish and fell into blank indifference; and all the while, his mind expanded, his ambitions took new shapes” (49). By stating that David was “rash” when making his decision to become a confectioner, the narrator implies that there was a certain level of immaturity on David’s part. However, now the narrator seems to suggest that David has outgrown his sweet tooth, and with his maturation, his life as a confectioner no longer suits. Why is this? Why is sugar and its consumption controversial in the nineteenth centruy?
Laura Eastlake provides answers. She claims that by midcentury, “sugar and sweet-eating were associated with juvenility, femininity, and the domestic sphere” and were considered “antithetical to adult British manliness” (516). If sugar and sweets were associated with youth, femininity, and the domestic sphere, David’s desire to change his life begins to make more sense. As a young British man, his work as a confectioner provides him with no means to elevate himself within society. His maturation and loss of his sweet tooth seem to imply that he wants to become the epitome of British manliness; however, because of the work that he does and the negative way that sweet-eating is viewed, he is unable to do so. Instead, he is forced to stay in this perpetual state of juvenility and unseriousness. Thus, the tension between the life that David wants to leave behind and the one that he wants to create becomes clear. If he is to be a “real” man, he must give up sweets on all fronts.
Eastlake also claims that in addition to being associated with juvenility and unmanliness, the “seemingly domestic acts of sugar consumption became highly politicized and were made analogous to the consumption not only of slave labor but of human bodies and blood” (516). As someone who makes his living on the selling and consumption of sugar, David’s connection to sugar plantations is established. Taking Eastlake’s claims into account and the narrator’s suggestion that David wants to create a new life for himself outside of being a confectioner, I wonder if perhaps Eliot is critiquing both what it means to be a British man and the practice of slavery simultaneously. If British men who are the epitome of manliness should not consume sugar and sweets, then it would seem that sugar plantations should not hold value to them. By extension, I would argue that Eliot suggests that British men who are the epitome of manliness should therefore not support slavery and the way that sugar plantations are managed.
I’m fascinated by the connection you draw between sugar and colonialism. When David tells Jacob he can transform stolen guineas into candies, he inadvertently speaks the truth. David steals money from slaves and colonists to make a fortune off their labor. Of course, David would not look at this money as stolen. He would argue that “it is not robbery” to take what is rightfully his, just as he does with his mother’s guineas (Eliot 51). David suggests that he doesn’t rob his mother because she cannot “prosecute” him (51). Ironically, the law justifies his illegal actions. If accused of wrongdoing, would he make the same argument about slaves? Though I am unfamiliar with colonial law, I doubt that slave laborers could press charges against their colonial overlords. David justifies his immoral actions through the law, but the law is shaped by immoral people like him. In other words, David exists in a positive feedback loop; the actions of colonialists constantly reaffirm the law, and vice versa. I agree with your assertion that Eliot critiques masculinity, but I believe she also indicts the law. Our legal system must be reformed, she argues, before we can effect substantial change.
I like your close reading of Faux and his sugar creation vs sugar consumption. You talk about how sugar creates an implicit connection with slavery and control. I wonder how that plays with the fact that once David opens his shop, the women in the town begin to buy from him therefore forcing himself into the domestic sphere of the homes in the town and sort of becoming a controlling factor of the wives and husbands happiness. I also think it would be interesting if we look at Count Fosco here too and how he uses Bon Bons to reward his wife when she listens to him, so essentially using sugar to control her.
I really enjoyed reading your comment, as Brother Jacob was one of the first things that I thought of when reading the “Sugar” secondary reading. I like how you pointed out how he would give his brother, Jacob, sweets as a bargaining tool which reminds me of Count Fosco giving his wife sweets as a means of reward. I wonder what it could mean that both of these characters are giving people who are lower than them in society these sweets, and if that supports the juvenile and feminine nature or sugar at this time.
I was so delighted to see a post about Brother Jacob: like in our discussion today about The Woman in White, I think that the subtleties of societal critique in Victorian literature are fascinating and deserve the kind of deep thought you’ve given them in your synthesis. I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts on the way that Eliot utilizes the genre of satire to internally critique both her characters and the real individuals they satirize. Brother Jacob operates on several different levels of intersectional criticism, including, as you addressed, the colonial aspect of confectionary.