Food, Labor, and Emotional Intimacy in Amanda Usen’s Scrumptious

Abstract

Literary Theories have started to take an interest in food as an important narrative element in terms of representing social and economic relations. Food in modern fiction is no longer just a source of food or enjoyment, but a system that is defined and guided by the position of the class, the conditions of labour, and emotional control. The novel Scrumptious by Amanda Usen provides a valuable literary point of entry into the analysis of these issues because the author places her romantic story against the backdrop of the challenging and risky professional work in the cooking industry. Using the experiences of the two main characters, Marly and Joe, the novel is able to bridge intimate relations into the material realities of food labour. The socio-economic reading of Scrumptious discussed in this paper is concerned with the culinary labour organisation of identity, aspiration, and emotional engagement. Basing his/her research on the specific concept proposed by Pierre Bourdieu of taste and habitus and the theory of emotional labour introduced by Arlie Hochschild, the paper will explore the manner in which the work of professional cooking, described in the novel, is both labour and affective. Kitchens come out as the area of subordination, strictness, and endangering, forming both the professional identity and the personal relationships. The article claims that Scrumptious has food labour as the central focus of the narrative form, and it shows that romantic intimacy can be built under the conditions of economic uncertainty and emotional regulation. The love in the novel does not exist as an abstract or separate form of material life, and rather, it is created by the fruiting work and the burden of work, emotional stress. The novel by Usen exposes food as a literary framework in which the issues of class, labour, and emotional experience are negotiated in the context of socio-economic realities of culinary work.