The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

 

Margaret Atwood

•       Born on November 18, 1939, in Ottawa, Ontario

•       Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor

•       Earned bachelor’s degree from Victoria College, University of Toronto in 1961 & master’s degree in 1962

•       Published her first collection of poetry, Double Persephone, was published as a pamphlet by Hawskhead Press in 1961 followed by The Circle Game in 1966 , which was awarded the prestigious Governor General’s Award

•       First novel, The Edible Woman, published in 1969

•       In 1972, she published a critical work called Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. In the same year, Atwood published her second novel, Surfacing.

•       Internationally known for her dystopian masterpiece, The Handmaid’s Tale published in 1985

•       Cat's Eye in 1988

•       The Robber Bride in 1993

•       Alias Grace in 1996

•       The Blind Assassin in 2000

•       Oryx and Crake in 2003

•       The Penelopiad in 2005

•       The Year of the Flood in 2009

•       MaddAddam in 2013

•       The Heart Goes Last in 2015

•       Hag-Seed in 2016

•       The Testaments in 2019 (joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize with Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo)

•       Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, 9 collections of short fiction, 8 children's books, and 2 graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction

•       She has received a number of prestigious awards for her writing, including two Booker Prizes(The Blind Assassin in 2000 & The Testaments in 2019) , the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. 

•       A number of her works have been adapted for film and television. 

About the novel

•       Published in 1969

•       Protofeminist rather than feminist work (The novel's publication coincided with the rise of the women's movement in North America, but is described by Atwood as "protofeminist" because it was written in 1965 and thus anticipated second-wave feminism)

•       About consumer-oriented world of 1960s (Depicts  and critiques the objectification and dehumanization of  women as consumable objects in a consumerist patriarchal society).

•       Explores gender stereotypes

Plot: Part 1

The novel begins with a first-person narrator in the voice of the female protagonist, Marian McAlpin. For the first few chapters Marian describes her relationships to her roommate, Ainsley; her boyfriend, Peter, her pregnant friend, Clara and about her job, which requires her to take the technical language of survey questions and translate it into a layman’s language so that anybody can understand it. Marian reluctantly goes from house to house asking people their opinions about a beer ad that will soon be broadcast on the radio when she was asked to substitute for one of the company's surveyors by her employer.

During this survey Marian meets Duncan, an unconventional young man who throws Marian off guard with his lies and almost immediate admittance of his dishonesty.

Ainsley announces that she wants to get pregnant After watching Clara interact with her children. When Marian asks if this means that Ainsley wants to get married, Ainsley denies and admit that she wants to raise the child by herself as a single parent. She also wants to choose a man who will not make a fuss create any problem about getting married. Ainsley then asks Marian about a friend (an old friend, Len Shank, who has the reputation of being a womanizer) whose name was mentioned by Marian while they were dining at Clara's house.

A day later, in an attempt to release their exertion and depression, Peter and Marian have sex in the bathtub, Marian gets disturbed after having sex with Peter, and because of many other reasons from that point until the end of the story her discomfort and insane behavior intensifies.

Marian introduces Peter to Len in a restaurant. Marian is surprised to see Ainsley who appears at their table without informing them. At this point Marian realizes that Ainsley has targeted Len as the proposed father of her child. Through the rest of the evening, Marian is caught up in emotions that she does not understand.

She cries without knowing the reason for her sadness, and, later, she runs away. When the group reunites at Len's apartment, Marian hides under a bed. Eventually she is confronted by Peter, and she tells him she didn't know what she was doing. Marian fails to control herself, feels as her mind and body are separated. But before saying good night, Peter proposes marriage by telling her that it is time for him to settle down. Marian accepts and relinquishes to Peter all responsibility for making decisions.

Shortly after her engagement, Marian bumps into Duncan at a laundromat. It is the first time they have seen one another since the survey. They share an abbreviated conversation, then kiss, stare at one another, and depart.

Part One ends with Marian commenting on her engagement, concluding that although her actions have recently been inconsistent with her own true personality not able to understand why she is behaving like this. She then sees one of her childhood dolls and remembers how she used to leave food with this doll overnight but was always disappointed in the morning when the food had not been eaten. With this image, Atwood leads into the next section, which deals with Marian's eating problems.

Part 2

Part Two begins with a third-person narrator. Instead of being inside Marian's head, the narrator now looks at Marian from a distance. There are other shifts as well. Clara has given birth to her third child and is once again in "possession of her own frail body." Peter has begun to stare at Marian as if he were analyzing the changes in Marian’s behavior (he tries to read her as he would read a manual of how to work a camera). Also in this part of the novel, Marian and Duncan become closer and relationship intensifies. The more fascinated she becomes with Duncan, the less suited she is for coping with her life with Peter.

At this point of the novel Marian faces her first troubled encounter with food. At dinner with Peter, she looks down at her plate, and instead of seeing a steak, she sees the live animal from which it was taken. She watches Peter cutting his steak and refers to it as if he were operating on a cow. Along with Marian's increasing inability to eat food, she also imagines that her body is beginning to disappear. The first images come to her in a dream in which her feet and hands are disappearing.

Marian meets with Duncan again, finding his "lack of interest [in her] comforting." She also tries to convince herself that her relationship with Duncan has nothing to do with Peter although she fears that if the men were ever to meet one another, they might end up destroying one another.

In contradiction to his lack of interest, Duncan tells Marian that he needs something real in his life. He's hoping it is Marian. He then adds that to find out if she is real, he wants her to peel herself out of all the woolen layers that she is wearing and go to bed with him. Marian agrees, but they do not know where to go, except to a hotel where Marian would be looked at as a prostitute.

They do not go to the hotel this time, but this scene is a foreshadowing, or preview, of a later scene in which Marian is wearing a sequined red dress and has her face made up. She realizes, in this later scene, that she does look like a prostitute and even encourages that impression by flirting with the hotel clerk.

The last section of Part Two tells of Peter's party and its aftermath. Marian's eating patterns have eliminated all natural foods. She is down to "eating" only vitamin pills. Peter remains unaware of her problems and suggests that for the party she should buy a new dress, something less "mousy" than her normal wardrobe. He also hints that she should do something with her hair. Although Marian feels uncomfortable in the new red dress and new hairdo, she succumbs to Peter's wishes.

Before the party, Marian takes a bath, during which she sees three separate versions of herself reflected in the hot and cold water taps and the faucet. Later, in her bedroom, she again sees three images.

This time it is two of her dolls on either side of a mirror, with her own reflection in the middle. When she stares at the three images, she feels that the dolls are pulling her apart.

After Marian puts on her new red dress, Ainsley makes up Marian's face, attaching false eyelashes to her lids, and teaching Marian how to create an alluring but false smile. Later, at the party, Marian explores her new image in a mirror and wonders what is beneath the surface, holding her together. Everything that she sees of herself is false.

Despite her assumption that she is coping at the beginning of the party, in the end Marian runs away. She searches for Duncan, who has refused to enter Peter's apartment once he sees how Marian is dressed. She finds him, and they finally have sex. Later Duncan takes her for a long walk and literally and symbolically points out her way back home.

The next day, Marian bakes a cake-woman, clothing her as if the cake-woman were wearing a red dress. She makes this cake-woman as a test for Peter. Peter fails the test, refusing to take part in the parody. So Marian eats the cake herself.

Part 3

Marian cleans up the apartment and plans to move on. In the last few sentences, she tells Duncan that she is eating again, and he welcomes her back to reality. Then she watches Duncan finish off the cake.

‘woman-shaped-cake

The ‘woman-shaped-cake’ works as a symbol of ideal woman that Peter wants Marian to be. She asks Peter to eat the cake instead he becomes furious at Marian unusual behavior. The very moment Peter leaves, Marian feels extreme hunger and starts eating the cake. By eating that cake Marian shows her refusal to be the kind of woman others expect her to be. It is her way of saying no to the patriarchal system. She would rather consume herself than letting anyone else to consume her. Marian is satisfied with her decisions and is feeling content with her renewed personality.

“A Note from the Author”

"It’s noteworthy that my heroine’s choices remain much the same at the end of the book as they are at the beginning: a career going nowhere, or marriage as an exit from it. But these were the options for a young woman, even a young educated woman, in Canada in the early sixties”. For this reason, I would argue that the way to solve the impasse in criticism of The Edible Woman is not to focus on the novel’s final chapter, not to seek closure and stable interpretation, but to listen to the silences of a conclusion that returns readers again to the place where the heroine’s troubles began."

Thus, we should resist imposing final, stable meaning onto the “edible-woman” cake, and rather seek the space where the silences abound, where Marian loses the ability to speak for herself in the first person, where her body speaks through anorexia—in short, the space where she becomes not only most marginalized from dominant culture but also at the same time one of its most penetrating critics.

Marian bakes and serves the “edible woman” to Peter as she rejects him as a marriage partner. Ultimately, Part III witnesses Marian’s emergence from third-person anorectic space; she regains the ability to eat and is once more the speaker, the “I.” Even though the novel’s consummating act, the baked and served “edible woman,” has generally been interpreted as either an act of defiance and liberation or as an indication of her reinsertion into the economic and social machine of capitalism.

“You’ve been trying to destroy me, haven’t you,” she said. “You’ve been trying to assimilate me. But I’ve made you a substitute, something you’ll like much better. This is what you really wanted all along, isn’t it? I’ll get you a fork,” she added somewhat prosaically.

Peter stared from the cake to her face and back again.

 She wasn’t smiling. His eyes widened in alarm. Apparently he didn’t find her silly.

•       The Edible Woman highlights various ideas of cannibalism, suppression, obligation to behave in a determined way and the quest to find oneself. Bringing into light various true pictures in which our society lacks behind and urge for change. Throughout the Novel we come across various encounters where we see that how a woman’s character is decided by paltry things like how they dress up, virginity, their pregnancy is considered as an act of disloyalty and how marriage is considered as a big concern. we perceive that how woman is dominated by a man in a relationship and the lack of control on her own life.

Cannibalism

The most dominating element throughout the novel is cannibalism. Marian conceives that she is being consumed by her boyfriend as she consumes food. When sex becomes the medium of consumption, she feels caught in a sex role trap and wants to break out of or else she would lose her identity and self- respect. Through this, Atwood depicts how Women are always treated as objects for someone’s pleasure.

Characters

•       Marian MacAlpin is the protagonist and the first-person narrator during Parts One and Three of the novel.

•       Ainsley Tewce is Marian's roommate; she works in an electric toothbrush repair shop.

•       Peter Wollander, a lawyer, is Marian's boyfriend, and later, fiancé.

•       Len Slank is a bachelor friend of Marian's from college; he works in television.

•       Clara Bates is another friend from college; Clara dropped out second year to marry Joe and now has three children

•       Duncan is a graduate student in English with whom Marian has an affair.

•       The three office virgins: Lucy, Emmy, and Millie

•       Mrs. Bogue, head of the research department at Marian's firm

•       Fischer Smythe and Trevor, Duncan's roommates, also graduate students in English.

•       The Lady Down Below is Marian and Ainsley's landlady, allegorically representing traditional female ideals.

Theme:

Quest for self/identity

•       The novel maps out the protagonist Marian MacAlpin’s journey of first losing her sense of self and its rediscovery through the idea of symbolic cannibalism.

Gender Roles

•       Closely related to her search for identity is Marian's attempt to define her role as a woman. Initially she gets lost in other people's definitions. But by the end of the novel she starts taking control over her life.

Alienation

In the transitions from first person to third person, Atwood demonstrates Marian's growing alienation from her body. At the company Christmas party, Marian looks around at the other women, thinking "You were green and then you ripened: became mature. Dresses for the mature figure. In other words, fat." Marian refuses to become likewise, which would transform her into a woman and as such be constrained by a sexist culture. Marian is, therefore, alienated from nature as she places herself outside the process of maturation.

 

Symbolic Significance of the Title

•       It implies the central image, the metaphor of eating/consumption as a prominent motif in the novel, woven adroitly in the narrative from title page to final scene to flesh out the theme.

•       Ex. Seymour Surveys Company, a market research agency – ice-cream

•       Ex. Marian’s loss of appetite symptomatic of loss of sense of self. She associates herself with food/meat/prey being consumed by Peter as consumer/ hunter.

•       Ex. The cake-  A symbolic substitute of ideal of femininity (meek, passive and docile woman) that is traditionally foisted upon women but Marian  doesn't identify with. Marian’s baking of the cake and eating it implies a gesture of defiance, a way of saying no to a system that defines women as commodity and devours them.

Narrative Structure 

•       The point of view from which the story has been told shifts to correspond to the stages of Marian’s journey.

•       In Chapters 1 to 12, when Marian is still in her own possession, the narrative is told from the first person point of view.

•       Chapter 13 to 30 are told from the third person point of view indicating Marians dissociating self/ loss of self.

•       In the single chapter that makes up the final section, Marian becomes herself again, and Atwood returns to the first person narrative point of view. As Marian says “I was thinking of myself in the first person singular again”.

•       Linear Plot

•       Open Ended conclusion- No clear cut resolution to the problem. Marian’s quest continues yet she surely is more self-aware than she was in the beginning.

•       Tone – comic, humorous, witty and sarcastic

  Motifs 

       Eating/consumption of food

•       Advertisements- Moose Beer, super market

•       Hunting/shooting – Peter’s guns and camera

•       Pregnancy/motherhood archetypal role of women as nurturers- Clara, Ainsley, Len’s regression into infant like condition after recollection of egg incident.

    (since he ate a chicken fetus offered by his mother, thus symbolically devouring himself by command of women, he has developed an aversion to pregnancy, childbirth. It also explains his adult behaviour as a seducer of women)

Some significant incidents in the plot

•       Meeting at Park Plaza

•       Moose Beer survey

•       Laundromat

•       Movie Hall

•       The office party

•       The party at Peter’s house

•       Journey to the ravines, edge of the cliff  -cavity/pit

•       Cleaning the apartment

•       Baking cake in the shape of a woman

References

•       The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood Edited by Coral Ann Howells

•       Margaret Atwood Feminism and Fiction by Fiona Tolan

•       “Neatly severing the body from the head:” female abjection in Margaret Atwood’s the edible woman- Ulla Kriebernegg University of Graz, Austria

•       Analyzing the performance of feminine gender roles in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman by L´eonore Guillain Iris Ruide

•       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edible_Woman

•       https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/edible-woman

•       https://www.thoughtco.com/atwoods-the-edible-woman-3528955

•       https://www.supersummary.com/the-edible-woman/summary/