Look Back in Hunger: The Metaphorization of Women as Food in Tim O’Brien’s <i>Tomcat in Love</i>

Abstract Drawing on the conceptual metaphor WOMAN IS FOOD, the present article aims to offer a fresh perspective on the representation of predatory conduct in American campus fiction and on the attendant manipulation of the meaning and essence of femininity. More precisely, it investigates how Thomas H. Chippering, the overly and overtly lecherous professor-cum-narrator in Tim O’Brien’s Tomcat in Love (1998), straddling town and gown and armed with the self-bestowed authority to set rules and assign roles, pigeonholes his female students and acquaintances as edible objects and proceeds to edge them towards his plate and palate, as it were. The persistent utilization of culinary images and analogies in the novel underscores the extent to which prejudices and stereotypes are ingrained in language, thought, and action. On the other hand, individual and collective female resistance augurs well for the possibility of warding off unwanted sexual advances and innuendo, weeding out predators, and fostering easy coexistence of the sexes inside and outside academia. Similarly, it is demonstrated that universities’ promptness in addressing and redressing on-campus moral transgressions helps maintain public faith in the value and values of education.