45 pages • 1 hour read
The Edible Woman
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Symbols & Motifs
Seymour Surveys’ Pension Plan
Marian has been an employee at Seymour Surveys for four months and is therefore required to sign papers to join the company’s pension plan. She goes into a “panic” about providing these signatures as it implies a lifetime of staying in the same office role. In this way, the company’s pension plan symbolizes the novel’s theme of Autonomy and Social Roles. The office virgins advise Marian to simply submit in a traditionally-expected feminine way, and that doing so will eventually lead to Marian accepting her role. When Marian becomes engaged to Peter, she removes herself from the pension plan, yet this retirement forces her to be fully financially dependent upon Peter, losing her autonomy. Therefore, Marian's pension plan, or lack thereof, symbolizes her conflict with finding a balance between her autonomy and her social role as a young woman in Western society.
Mirrors and Photography
Mirrors and photography as motifs of captured inner selves is first introduced by Duncan after he smashes his bathroom mirror and claims to prefer his “private” one that is less suspicious of his identity (150). This story significantly influences Marian’s associations of her reflection with an inner self that has been captured in a particular social role, gender role, or appearance. When looking in a mirror and wearing a dress for Peter’s party that deviates from her normal style but conforms to fashion expectations, Marian questions the transitory nature of appearance in relation to a perceived core personality (251). The more her autonomy is challenged by her approaching wedding date, the more Marian fears her photograph being taken, as a photo would capture her appearance in a specific role.
The Mummy
When visiting the Ancient Egypt exhibit at the museum with Duncan, Marian views a preserved corpse laying on its side (204-05). This mummy symbolizes Marian’s fear of stasis and being caught in a specific sole role that would require her to remain unchanging for the remainder of her married life. Further, it is a symbol of Marian’s hopes for her relationship with Duncan, as she engages with him primarily as a means to keep herself from falling into the static role of Peter’s fiancée. Duncan and Marian view this mummy together in the academic setting of the museum, which incorporates Duncan’s fears of becoming intellectually stagnant the more effort he puts into his English graduate degree.
Food
Food, especially the woman-shaped cake at the end of the story, represents consumerism and Marian’s inability to make her own choices. The story establishes that clothing, for example, is a physical manifestation of the wearer’s sense of self. Clothing is chosen by the wearer for the most part, but it also must conform to the social expectations of time, place, gender, and social standing. Likewise, food represents this consumerism and social pressure, and Marian’s acquired inability to consume food indicates her resistance to conforming to these social expectations. Marian goes through the story being baffled by her inability to eat because she has not quite fully formed an understanding of the underlying objections she has to the conformity that is expected of her. She convinces herself that she must have always wanted Peter to ask her to marry him despite her body clearly rebelling against the suffocating concept of being a wife and eventual mother. When she doesn’t listen to her body’s spontaneous fleeing from her closeness with Peter, her body then changes tack and rejects food. By rejecting food, Marian is subconsciously refusing to ingest society’s expectations. When she tries to turn the tables on Peter by making him a cake and offering it to him to eat, Peter rejects her offer because Marian’s sensibility (that trait Peter finds most appealing about her) has suddenly vanished. Marian is then free to reappropriate her sense of self by consuming the symbolic woman herself.
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By Margaret Atwood
