What's (or Who's) Eating You?

In Margaret Atwood’s 1969 novel, The Edible Woman, protagonist Marian is consumed with a growing sense of emptiness.  Marian, an employee at Seymour Surveys and the girlfriend of domineering, but successful Peter, begins to see a relation between her identity and food.  When Marian and Peter go out to a restaurant for a steak dinner, Marian takes notice of how Peter treats his food.  “He [Peter] was almost finished.  She watched the capable hands holding the knife and fork, slicing precisely with an exact adjustment of pressures.  How skillfully he did it: no tearing, no ragged edges.  And yet it was a violent action, cutting; and violence in connection with Peter seemed incongruous to her.”  Peter’s treatment of his food foreshadows his treatment of Marian. 

Marian begins to see food as a metaphor for her identity – she is always consumed.  “She looked down at her own half-eaten steak and suddenly saw it as a hunk of muscle.  Blood red.  Part of a real cow that once moved and ate and was killed, knocked on the head as it stood in a queue like someone waiting for a streetcar.”  Marian is unable to finish her dinner and soon swears off all meats and animal products.  The longer she is consumed by Peter, and her less-than-helpful and non-platonic friend Duncan, the stronger her rejection of food becomes.  Her identity becomes lost in the roles others have formed for her.  For Peter, Marian molds herself into a sensible and naïve fiancée, envisioning herself as his happy housewife.  As soon as Peter shows Marian a sign of commitment by asking her to marry him, Marian gives up control in the relationship.  (“My first impulse was to answer, with the evasive flippancy I’d always used before when he asked me serious questions about myself…But instead I heard a soft flannelly voice I barely recognized, saying, “I’d rather leave the big decisions up to you.”  I was astounded at myself.  I’d never said anything remotely like that to him before.  The funny thing was I really meant it.”)  For Duncan, Marian is willing to put her emotional needs on the back burner and lets herself be deceived by Duncan’s supposed interest in her.  Duncan uses Marian to satisfy his hunger for sexual intimacy and even makes himself appear vulnerable and helpless to gain her trust and interest. After Duncan has achieved this, he dismisses Marian and her problems and says, “You shouldn’t expect me to do anything.  I want to go back to my shell.  I’ve had enough so-called reality for now….You aren’t an escape any more, you’re too real.  Something’s bothering you and you’d want to talk about it; I’d have to start worrying about you and all that, I haven’t time for it.”

In the end, neither Peter nor Duncan can give Marian the satisfaction she needs.  In order to reclaim her identity, Marian fashions a cake in her image and offers it to Peter.  She tells him, “You’ve been trying to destroy me, haven’t you.  You’ve been trying to assimilate me.  But I’ve made you a substitute, something you’ll like much better.”  Since both Peter and Duncan have consumed Marian’s identity, it is fitting that she reclaims her identity through food.  Though food once enslaved Marian, it has now become a source of liberation.