Piglet

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of disordered eating.

In Piglet, Lottie Hazell explores the relationship between food and class in Great Britain, highlighting how a household’s chosen food, its preparation, and its presentation all act as indicators of that household’s class status. This thematic concern is closely tied to Piglet’s desire to build a perfect life with her fiancé, Kit. Piglet associates her working-class family with a lack of culinary taste and sophistication. While Kit’s mother cooks elaborate homemade meals for her family, Piglet’s family relies on cheap takeout: “[O]n Saturday it was a takeaway—Chinese, from the shop in town—and on Friday it was fish” (4). Although Piglet once enjoyed these simple foods, “these routines […] now ma[ke] Piglet feel a crawling embarrassment, a creeping pity” (5). She repeats this idea later in the novel while preparing an elaborate dessert for a dinner party and reflecting on the simple desserts that her mother served. She thinks that “their easy ways—their yellow custard in a Pyrex jug on the small dining table, draped in doilies—embarrass[] her” (35). Piglet’s repeated use of the word “embarrass” reflects her shame in the working-class foods she grew up with.

As a cookbook editor, Piglet aims to signal her entrance to the upper class through the foods she prepares for her friends and family.