Henry James's Art of Eating

In fact, though Mudge does introduce the world of food into at least one Jamesian text, his mode of doing would seem rather to confirm than to deny the existing understanding of James's relation to that universe.3 In essence, Mudge affirms the Kantian line separating the taste of sense-physical, gustatory taste-from the taste of reflection, or aesthetic taste, which achieve disinterestedness must leave the desiring body behind.4 That is, Mudge's very tendency to recur to the world of physical tastes, both literally and as a heuristic for making sense of other pleasures, clearly works in the novella to distinguish his commonplace, earthbound ambitions from the imaginative flights of his more sensitive fiancée, herself often read as a stand-in for the author.5 As Tony Tanner puts it, neatly linking these two aspects of mudge's character, the grocer leads a purely physical existence: he voices the claims of the creature who wishes to join the herd.