"The Edible Woman" and Gender

Paper Summary:

The novel "The Edible Woman" by Margaret Atwood has clear themes relating to gender. In the novel, Atwood expresses the role that men and women play, while showing that women can rise above their role and be themselves, instead of taking on the role that society has prescribed for them. The paper shows that Atwood communicates this theme by having a strong female and male character, each representing their gender. She also uses consumerism as an effective symbol and cleverly shifts the pronoun in the three parts of the book. By looking at each of these factors in turn, the contribution each makes toward expressing the theme is illustrated in this paper.

From the Paper:

"The character representing the male gender is Marian's fiance Peter. Like Marian, Peter's role has also been created out of what society communicates to him. Marian refers to this at one point when speaking of the places Peter has wanted to make love saying, "Peter's abstractions on these occasions gave me the feeling that he liked doing them because he had read about them somewhere" (Atwood 56). This shows that Peter's ideas on gender have come from society itself. Peter's ideas on the male is that he should dominate the female, while his ideas on the female is that the female is there to meet his needs. Based on these assumptions, Peter only really thinks about himself. He has little consideration for Marian while only seeing her in terms of what she does for him. This represents the typical male attitude and the role that society prescribes for men."

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