For example, Marian describes the structure of the organisation she works for, Seymour Surveys, as ‘layered like an ice-cream sandwich, with three floors: the upper crust, the lower crust, and out department, the gooey layer in the middle’. I liked the use of food-related metaphors and similes throughout the book. ‘She had tried to reason with it, had accused it having frivolous whims, had coaxed it and tempted it, but it was adamant and if she used force it rebelled.’ It gets to the point where Marian comes to view her body as having a personality or will of its own that she is powerless to resist. (The scene that corresponds most closely to the title takes place only at the very end of the book.) However, it’s true that Marian’s dilemma about her future prompts some very rebellious behaviour by her stomach, often at the most inopportune moments. I think the mention of ‘self-indulgent grotesqueries’ made me expect the concept of the ‘edible woman’ to form a greater part of the book than it actually does. The book is structured in three parts – the first and last parts are written in the first person, the second part in the third person. preceding, anticipating or laying the groundwork for feminism. She sees the book as ‘protofeminist’ rather than ‘feminist’, i.e. She notes that The Edible Woman was ‘conceived by a twenty-three-year-old and written by a twenty-four-year old’ and reflects that ‘its more self-indulgent grotesqueries are perhaps attributable to the youth of the author’. In the introduction to my Virago Modern Classics edition, Margaret Atwood (writing in 1979) reports that she had been reflecting for some time about what she refers to as ‘symbolic cannibalism’, exemplified by wedding cakes decorated with sugar brides and grooms. *links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme Published: 1986 Genre: Literary FictionĪ.uk ǀ ǀ .uk (supporting UK bookshops)
Marriage a la mode, Marian discovers, is something she literally can’t stomach.įormat: Paperback (281 pp.) Publisher: Virago All goes well at first, she likes her work in market research, and her broody flat-mate Ainsley – even an uncharacteristic sexual fling with the divinely mad Duncan cannot lure her away from her sober fiancé, Peter.īut Marion reckons without an inner self that wants something more, which talks to her through the food she eats and calmly sabotages her careful plans. Marian is a determinedly ordinary girl, fresh out of university, working at her first job but really only waiting to get married.
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