Hanna Zeckau

Writing about plates means writing about women: For it is they who have been setting tables, serving, and filling plates since the 18th century. The plate is a battlefield where the struggle of the sexes is fought discreetly, yet effectively. However, the plate can also be festive, richly adorned, and abundantly filled. Annabelle Hirsch skillfully guides us from the invention of the housewife through the 'Votes for Women' plates of the suffragettes to a feminist dinner party. Last but not least, she also tells a story of women's eating - about hunger strikes and eating disorders, but also about Virginia Woolf's famous assertion: 'One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.'.