Piglet

The croquembouche that Piglet bakes for her wedding acts as a symbol of her desire to present herself as a sophisticated member of the upper class, developing the narrative’s thematic interest in the intersection between Food and Class in Great Britain. The novel explicitly ties the complicated French pastry to her desire to fit into Kit’s sophisticated, upper-class life: “[H]er ambition, her ability, had been so simply distilled by this one decision, this action” (179). On the day of her wedding, Piglet gives herself “two hours to assemble the croquembouches [and] three hours to assemble herself” (201). These passages suggest that Piglet closely associates the perfection of the pastry with the perfect life she hopes to build. As a result, she also sees the croquembouche as a symbol of her growing distance from her working-class family. The sight of croquembouche, “perfect, placed on its prepared cardboard base, foiled in gold” (208), leads her to imagine “her parents with gleeful eyes, arm in arm, walking around the marquee later that day: ‘our Piglet made the cake herself. Well, it’s not a cake. It’s a crock-em-booch’” (208). Her parents’ inability to pronounce the word reflects what Piglet believes is a lack of sophistication.