I know this is a stupid and silly inquiry but I found it a little odd that Jacky was definitely on the chubby side for being so poor and lacking in food. Leonard however looked the part all thin and emaciated. I'm curious if this touched anyone else's thoughts.
shareYeah, I watched the film recently and thought the same thing!
'Candy-stripe a cancer ward. It's not my problem.'
In the book, it's suggested that Jacky is a bit on the large size. You'll find many poorer people who are on the large size; they're not all thin as a rake. Remember, the Basts weren't absolutely poor (at least when he had a job at the beginning), just on the edge of the abyss, on the right side of it, with Leonard fearing that he'd end up on the other side of it if things didn't go right.
shareConsider this: two people, person A 130lbs, person B 180lbs both stop eating at the same time when before they were both taking in the amount of calories needed to maintain their own weight. After five days of no or little foood person A may physically show a more "starving" body but person B is just as equally "starving". 'B' may not look it as much and may last longer with more fat stores but will still feel just as starving. I think Helen wasn't speaking literally.
"What's in a name? A nose by any other name would still smell." <smile>
a person can go from well fed to starving in only a matter of days (you try eating very little if not anything at all for 3 or 4 days) while their physical body may take weeks or even months to show outward sign of malnourishment. because the body will begin to use the fat stores to survive.
shareGood point! You and cu__chick, too. We now know that though many poor people in the U.S. may be overweight, it is because they eat all the wrong, cheap foods, with high calories and low nutrients.
The Basts probably subsisted on lots of white flour, sugar and fat. Though Jacky wasn't technically "starving" (in that she was about to die), she was definitely malnourished and hungry.
No doubt, Helen was embellishing a bit to gain Margaret's sympathy at the wedding in Shropshire, but this was to show that Margaret was going over to the Wilcox camp of capitalist ideas about the poor, something abhorred by Helen.
I think that one of the most pathetic scenes is Jackie watching Leonard and Helen go off boating, while she stays in the hotel room. She knows what will happen!
She deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die.
Odd she lets them do that. Shes very angry when she suspects Leonard was socializing with them and perhaps cheating on her. I guess she grew to trust the Schlegel sisters and hopes for the best. She is used to seeing her fate always being in the balance. I thought she was pregnant, and Bast marries her to make her honorable.
shareNo it isn't a stupid question at all. Interestingly, if you get a chance to look at late nineteenth century early twentieth photographs of poor areas of London or Liverpool say, you can see that not all undernourished people at thin. Particularly women as they got older - ie. lots of babies in quick succession, they did look 'chubby.' The major reason I would suggest is the 'type' of food the poor ate - food that might warm you for a bit and very likely high in calories, but not in nutritional value. Not the same, but similar principle to some overweight people today, who are nutritionally malnourished.
Example: if you look at the food the poor ate (East End London for example) you will find some meats (note the 'bit of ham' Jacky eats in the flat) as well as starchy food like potatoes and bread. The bread was often adulterated (ie. had some well dodgy stuff in there!), so it makes sense to me that Jacky was chubby. This doesn't even take into account alcohol abuse (rampant in poor areas) which, coupled with not sufficient good food to eat, would muck around with metabolism. Different people's bodies (as now) respond to diets in different ways. Hence skinny Mr. Bast.
Sorry, got a bit carried away there! Great film though isn't it? One of my all time faves!!!!
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The answer to this question has already been made by other posters: poverty does not necessarily translate to starvation, but to poor nutrition.
What I would like to point out is that a current candidate for the GOP nomination for President, former Senator Rick Santorum, just made this exact point as an argument against social programs (food stamps, I believe). Of course nutrionists quickly chimed in to demonstrate that his argument was simply ill-informed, but those are the type of "common sense" arguments that seem to fly in politics these days.
Well also, when Helen says she "found them starving," we don't know how long Bast has been out of work (i.e., food). His slide in the book is a little more gradual, and he ends up living exclusively on humiliating handouts from his family.
So Helen might have found them in a house without any food stocked and Leonard out of work, and with rent owing, and then labeled them "starving" (which they may well have been...but they haven't necessarily been "starving" for months and months.)
Poor people's food in old England and rural America can both lead to obesity -
fats and starches.