Much of Dolore Claiborne’s labor in Dolores Claiborne (1993) is domestic in nature, involving cooking, cleaning, and caring for other people, including her employer Vera Donovan and her awful husband Joe St. George. 

There are a handful of memorable food scenes in Dolores Claiborne, most of which come at big moments of confession or decision. When Dolores is finally overcome with the horror of her husband’s sexual abuse of their daughter Selena, she hits her breaking point while doing up the sheets on Vera’s bed, while Vera sits in the corner chair, knitting. This ends up being a fundamental turning point in Dolores’ and Vera’s relationship. As Dolores tells her interviewers, “I didn’t just cry; I put my apron up over my face and wailed. I was tired and confused and at the end of my thinkin. I hadn’t had anything but scratch sleep in weeks and couldn’t for the life of me see how I was going to go on” (181, emphasis original). When Dolores stops crying, figuring she’s about to be fired, Vera’s response is brusque and pragmatic, though there is care and empathy under the surface, and it’s Vera who helps Dolores see a way clear of her problem. At the conclusion of the two women’s conversation, Vera’s matter-of-fact nature still prevails and she tells Dolores “that bed’s never going to get made with you sitting on it. I’m going down to put on the tea-kettle. Maybe when you get done here, you’d like to come down and try a slice of the apple pie I brought over from the mainland. If you’re lucky, I might even add a scoop of vanilla ice cream” (190). A bakery pie from Jonesport isn’t going to solve all of Dolores’s problems, but it’s a pie she didn’t have to make with her own two hands, offered by the only person (however unlikely) who knows what’s going on in her life, and Dolores realizes that “I was really hungry for the first time in over four weeks” (190). 

Dolores also spends some time thinking about the food she will make for the day of the eclipse. As they get ready to settle in and watch the eclipse, Dolores tells Joe “I’ve got some nice salami, some Swiss cheese, and some water biscuits … I’m gonna make us a tray of hors d’oeuvres every bit as nice as the ones Vera’s guests are gonna have out there on the ferry” (223), an act that vicariously connects Dolores to that larger community and experience, even though the events of the afternoon will leave her feeling more alone than she has in her whole life. Joe rejects this kindness (though he gladly accepts the Scotch she’s brought him to go along with it) and demands a sandwich instead. Dolores makes his sandwich, “hummin a tune, and thinkin, ‘Make it good, Dolores—put on some of that red onion he likes and just enough mustard to make it tangy. Make it good, cause it’s the last thing he’s ever gonna eat’” (225). Both Dolores and Joe enjoy their snacks with a hearty appetite and when the eclipse comes, Dolores does what she has to do. 

In Castle Rock Kitchen, Theresa Carle-Sanders includes a recipe for “Sunday Boiled Dinner,” which refers back to a more passing reference that comes earlier in the novel. One night, Joe came in from working with a split in his pants and Dolores laughed at him. As she recounts the next moments all those years later, “when I went to the stove to check on the cabbage—I was makin a boiled dinner that night, I remember like it was yesterday—he got a chunk of rock maple out of the woodbox and whacked me in the small of the back with it” (93). Later that night, Dolores and Joe have a conversation that changes the course of all of their lives, when Dolores smashes Joe along the side of the head with a cream pitcher, then stands over him with a hatchet in hand and tells him she won’t put up with him hitting her anymore. He threatens to kill Dolores and she tells him to go ahead and do it if he’s going to, adding “once it’s done, you better heat up that boiled dinner and help yourself to some more of it … Eat til you bust, because you’ll be goin to jail and I ain’t heard they serve anything good and home-cooked in jail” (98). Joe doesn’t kill Dolores and he never hits her again, though this confrontation inadvertently begins the chain reaction of events that leads to Joe’s abuse of Selena, as their daughter comes out of her room, sees the tableau before her, and is afraid of her mother, a wedge that Joe leans into to isolate Selena, play upon her sympathies, and sexually abuse her. 

Carle-Sanders’ recipe in Castle Rock Kitchen for “Sunday Boiled Dinner” is good old-fashioned home cooking, just as Dolores promises. Starting with a good piece of corned beef and some savory spices, the beef is then boiled with potatoes, carrots, onion, turnips, and cabbage. The recipe is time-consuming (about four hours all told), but takes very little minding or fussing, and an occasional peek to check in on its progress (as Dolores does) is the most it demands once things are boiling away. It’s hearty and filling, and makes a really substantial amount of food (which Carle-Sanders helpfully addresses with a bonus recipe for “Red Flannel Hash” to be made with the leftovers). It’s homey and low maintenance and seems an ideal fit for Dolores, who does her best to care for her family while stretched to (and eventually beyond) her breaking point. 

[Page numbers are from the Signet paperback edition of Dolores Claiborne]