The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

The human mouth is made for eating, talking and kissing, is it not? In the novel "The Edible Woman", written by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood, the mouth plays an important role.

Marian McAlpine works in consumer research. She’s in her mid-twenties, and lives in an upstairs apartment with a friend, Ainsley. She becomes engaged to Peter, and she is sidetracked with the particular way her life begins to disintegrate.

It is possible to discern a development by three steps of Marian’s life throughout the story. It begins with her hunger; Marian’s eating seems often to be hampered. "I had to skip the egg and wash down a glass of milk and a bowl of cold cereal which I knew would leave me hungry long before lunch time."

Quite obviously, Peter is afraid of being captured by a woman, of losing his freedom; Marian begins to feel hunted, caught in his gaze; eventually she even confuses his camera with a gun. In many ways, the characters seem at once to be the hunters, then the predators, masters then slaves, subject then object. It swings back and forth quite continuously. Also, the idea of sexual identity lies at the heart of much of the story. The role of Marian's roommate Ainsley, another friend, Claire, and the gossip queens, the "office Virgins", help define Marian's dilemma of her own sexualy identidy.

The novel is narrated in first person in parts one and three, third person in part two. This had firstly confused me, then made sense: The position of the narrator changes in the second part of the story to be located outside the principle character. It is still Marian who tells the story; but she looks upon herself at a distance. The "I" of the first part becomes a "she" in the second. More or less, Marian stops eating. The foods accepted by her stomach become more and more limited and at the end one can detect a proper example of "self-starvation", or should I name it "anorexia"?

First Marian drops meat from her diet, then, eggs, vegetables, even pumpkin seeds. The final part of the novel describes how the appetite returns and at the same time Marian comes back to herself. This is illustrated by her decision to make a cake in the shape of a woman, a picture of herself perhaps? When Peter, the groom, refuses to eat the substitute for his bride and takes to flight, Marian devours it. The significance of the cake Marian serves Peter at the novel's end tied everything together for me. The stomach of the starving woman returns to normal. The edible woman can eat again.