The Edible Woman

Margaret Atwood’s debut novel, first published in 1969, was way ahead of its time. Initially it reminded me of Mad Men: a TV show in which women are undermined by the patriarch society from not so long ago. For the record, I have only seen three episodes of Mad Men and then I gave up, because it is neither fun to watch nor did I really care about any of the characters. What Mad Men and The Edible Woman have in common is the behavior of men towards women. The Edible Woman, however, is an “original”, a real product of the 1960s.

The protagonist of the novel is Marian, a woman in her twenties, not yet married and working in a company that does surveys as research for other companies. She lives with her roommate Ainsley, also a single woman in her twenties. Not far into the novel Marian agrees to get married to her longtime boyfriend Peter. Their relationship is very pragmatic; Peter makes a good provider, while Marian herself provides him with a partner for meaningful conversation, creative sex and she fulfills the role ascribed to her. With the engagement, Marian begins to develop complicated feelings that cause her to reject certain types of food – mostly meat and animal products. Even though she wants to, she can’t eat those things anymore because her body rejects it. On several occasions she also feels the need to hide or escape from her fiancee.

The first instance of Marian’s aversion to certain foods coincides with her recent engagement. When she and Peter, newly engaged, are in a restaurant, she lets Peter order a bloody steak for her. Though Marian mentions that she finds it comforting that Peter makes decisions for her (he provides her with a sense of security), her subconscious tries to battle this loss of control over her own personality. In her fear of commitment, developing an eating disorder is the only option for her to regain control of her own body. She rejects meat and other animal products because she identifies with animals being prey – also literally, since on three occasions in the novel, she runs away or hides from Peter. As her eating disorder escalates, Marian becomes afraid of dissolving into nothingness. Her mind and body become disassociated from each other: she always needs a while to recognize herself in the mirror and she doesn’t notice that she is crying until she sees a tear on the table in front of her. She considers her mind and body completely separate entities and reacts with panic when she discovers this.

The cause of this fear is Peter: he is a stereotypical man who wants to turn her into a stereotypical housewife. For him, Marian is a commodity to be consumed. By marrying Peter, Marian would have to give up her autonomy, even her personality. Peter has accepted his role in the system and expects Marian to do the same. Peter is simple and good looking, he is “what you see is what you get”. Marian feels like a proud owner of Peter, but whenever this is displayed, Peter immediately takes control of the situation, signaling that he owns Marian, not Marian him. She accepts this because it is comforting.

Marian’s refusal to eat can also be seen as a refusal to become fat, therefore pregnant. She sees pregnancy as a role. When she visits her pregnant friend Clara, she can’t see Clara as a normal human being – rather as a “mass of flesh with a pinhead” and she is glad when Clara “returns to her normal self” after having given birth. When Marian is confronted with this role herself, e.g. when she sees her distorted image with a “pinhead” in a the reflection of a spoon, she reacts with panic.

Peter continuously tries to remove Marian’s personality and force her into a role. For him, she would ideally be a blank canvas on which he can scribe his ideals of a housewife. He is the hunter, she is a trophy he shoots and puts against his wall. This happens somewhat literally towards the end of the novel, when Peter wants to “shoot” a picture of Marian, and in a decisive moment, Marian notices how anxious and stiff -like a deer in the headlights- this idea makes her. He rows her up for an execution – the execution of her personality. She runs away and the finale of the novel commences, which ends with the devouring of a woman-shaped cake. I will leave out the details of the latter, in case you might want to read the book yourself.

The Edible Woman is a novel which criticizes gender roles in a time when it was still normal that a woman only existed to get married and have children. It is exceptionally well written, full of sneaky little details that might escape you if you don’t pay attention. A lot of those I have pointed out here. I personally enjoyed the Toronto setting of the novel – though the name of the city is never mentioned, it is obvious if you have some local knowledge. I can highly recommend this book, since it is neither chic lit nor feminist nor anything other easy to categorize. However, it is likely that the reading experience will be a little bit different depending on your gender.