Sara Goldsmith studies it:
[T]he fork was commonly viewed with skepticism or even outright hostility. In a historical overview of cutlery in Feeding Desire, the catalog for a 2005 exhibition on the tools of the table, Sarah Coffin speculates that the fork's image problem could be connected to its resemblance to the devil's pitchfork (a word from which it derives its name).
The Dish 