Self-Determination in Margaret Atwood’s The
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge that I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam’s regulations on fraud and plagiarism. I am fully aware that failure to conform to these regulations may result in severe penalties. I confirm that this thesis has been written independently, and that any and all sources have been credited in the text.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ………. i Table of Contents ……….... ii
1 Introduction
1.1 The Power of Food ………... 1
1.2 The Effect of the Mind/Body Dichotomy on the Identity of Women …….. 4
1.3 Outline of Thesis Structure ………. 6
2 Chapter One
2.1 The Negative Influence of the Feminine Mystique on Female Characters
in The Edible Woman ………..…...
10
2.2 The Textuality of the Female Body …..……… 17
2.3 Interpreting the Hungry Female Body ……… 19
3 Chapter Two: Literary Anorexia …………..……….. 25 3.1 Fear of Fat and Femininity ………... 26
3.2 The Horror of Boundary Confusion ……… 32
3.3 Internal Division and Bodily Alienation as a Sign of Trauma and Survival ………. 37 3.4 The Impact of Consumer Culture on Female Identity ……….. 39
4 Chapter Three: The Representation of Female Identity through Metaphors of Women as Food ..………... 43
4.1 Consume or be Consumed: Women as Meat ……….. 45
4.2 The Fertile Woman: Women as Fruits, Vegetables and Eggs …………... 51
4.3 ‘Let them Eat Cake’: Women as Dessert ……… 55
Works Cited ………... 64
Introduction
Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own – John Berger, Ways of Seeing
1.1 The Power of Food
Food studies have become the basis of a burgeoning movement in recent years. Central to this movement is the belief that the study of the social and cultural uses of food can yield important information and insight into the human condition. The beliefs and behaviours surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of food, otherwise known as foodways, constitutes its own language and is “a prime domain for conveying meaning because eating is an essential and continuously repeated activity” (Counihan, Food and
Gender 19).
Due to the indispensable nature of food to our survival, one of the meanings that has become attached to food practices is power. David Arnold suggests that “food was, and continues to be, power in a most basic, tangible and inescapable form” (qtd. in Counihan,
Food and Gender 7). The themes of power and the circulation of it is a predominant theme in
Margaret Atwood’s oeuvre and according to Atwood herself:
Power is our environment. We live surrounded by it: it pervades everything we are and do, invisible and soundless, like air…
We would all like to have a private life that is sealed off from the public life and different from it, where there are no rulers and no ruled, no hierarchies, no politicians, only equals, free people. But because any culture is a closed system and our culture is one based and fed on power this is impossible, or at least very difficult […] So many of the things we do in what we sadly think of as our personal lives are simply duplications of the external world of power games, power struggles. (qtd. in Somacarrera 43)
Atwood’s description clearly illustrates the pervasiveness of power and how it permeates all relations in society, including the public and personal realms. Atwood’s definition of politics is also linked with power as she defines politics as “who is entitled to do what to whom, with impunity; who profits by it; and who therefore eats what” (qtd. in Somacarrera 51). Atwood’s
inclusion of the act of eating in her definition of politics implies that for her “consumption embodies coded expressions of power” (Parker 349). It is clear then, from Atwood’s inclusion of the act of consumption in her definition of politics and the extensive use of food metaphors in her work, that Atwood recognises the power dynamics inherent in certain food practices. Out of Atwood’s whole oeuvre, her first novel The Edible Woman (1969), contains the most relevant material for the study of women’s relationship with food and material from which to consider what this relationship might signify. Emma Parker suggests that in most of Atwood’s novels, including The Edible Woman, “eating is employed as a metaphor for power and is used as an extremely subtle means of examining the relationship between women and men” (349).
The Edible Woman follows the female protagonist Marian McAlpin as she suffers
from what is apparently a socio-political form of anorexia that develops once she agrees to marry her boyfriend, Peter Wollander. Marian’s refusal of food is often interpreted as a subconscious reaction to the restrictive gender politics of her era, namely the 1960s. For instance, Parker describes Marian’s non-eating as a “physical expression of her powerlessness and, at the same time, a protest against that powerlessness” (350). The novel focuses on Marian and her relationship with Peter, and the depiction of food and consumption practices within their relationship represents the balance of power between them. The combative, predatory interactions that are depicted between the sexes in the novel are representative of the relationship between the sexes in the world at large. Hence, although the power balance between the sexes does frequently shift; for the most part however, the male sex remains in a position of power and dominance over the female sex. As Atwood implies, this relation of power depicted at the personal level in The Edible Woman is a “duplication of the external world of power games”, a microcosm of the sexist, patriarchal society at the time of writing (qtd. in Somacarrera 43).
In this thesis, I will focus on the notion that the power struggle between the sexes is depicted through the character’s relationships with food and eating in Margaret Atwood’s
The Edible Woman. Based on this claim, I will examine how Atwood uses food imagery,
particularly where hunting metaphors, images of women as food, and the concept of female appetite are concerned. I will argue as well that such metaphors serve the function of representing the violent relationship between the sexes and showing how a patriarchal culture constricts the development of female identity.
The study of women’s relationship with food is an important topic in the field of feminist food studies and many scholars have begun to apply a gendered or feminist perspective to their work on food studies leading to the emergence within the last 15 years of the field of feminist food studies. Examining women’s relationships with food from a feminist perspective is an appropriate approach to investigating female subjectivities in a patriarchal culture as women have long been considered central to food practices and “food practices are both constitutive and reflective of gender construction” (Avakian and Haber 8). One of the reasons for women’s centrality to food practices can be traced back to classical times in which Christine Downing argues that, “women were linked with food not only because they cultivated and prepared it but also because their own bodies were a source of food and life” (qtd. in Rubenstein 78). Women’s ability to provide food for their foetus and then for their child through breastfeeding intensifies women’s symbolic connection with food and with the role of nurturer.
This association of women with food and the domestic sphere has not drastically changed since classical times. Indeed, the domestic sphere is a hotly debated topic in feminist food studies and has been identified “as a conflicted site, one that simultaneously reproduces patriarchal values and, hence, the physical, intellectual, and ideological subordination of women and that serves as a space where women enjoy an amount of power and control far
surpassing that which they exert over the public and political realms” (McLean 250). Although there can be positive modes of being for women within the domestic sphere, The
Edible Woman, a novel very much of its time as noted above, focuses on the negative role of
the domestic sphere in relation to women. At the time of the novel’s writing, it was expected that women forgo professional careers in order to stay at home and take care of the house and their future husbands and families. Atwood explores how women were confined to the domestic sphere and felt obligated to accept their apparent domestic duties and roles of housewife and mother to the detriment of developing their own sense of identity or alternative roles.
Due to women’s historic confinement to the domestic sphere and the objectification of women that is common in patriarchal society in general, food and the body become powerful tools for women to communicate with. Susie Orbach argues that “food and the body has become an arena in which women have been allowed to express themselves [therefore] food and the body become a language they communicate with” (373).
1.2 The Effect of the Mind/Body Dichotomy on the Identity of Women
The mind/body dichotomy, a duality that has existed in Western ideology and morality for centuries, has contributed to the denigration of the female. In the Western dualistic tradition, the mind and body are seen as separate and there is “moral value in dominance of body by mind” (Counihan, Anthropology 103). This attitude is often attributed to the philosopher Descartes who established dualism as a distinct philosophy with his belief that “I think, therefore I am” [je pense, je suis], however the dualistic tradition dates back to early Christian theology (Sanchez-Grant 77-78). Following from Cartesian rationality is the notion that “rationality, reason, intelligence and selfhood” are associated with the mind whereas the
body is merely a container for the objective mind (Day et al. 51). “The corporeal body, with all its desires, lusts and appetites is depicted as a threat to the soul/mind/self, and is therefore in need of control, containment and domination” (Ibid.) This belief therefore also entails, unsurprisingly, a hierarchy whereby the rational mind is privileged over the body. This is reflected in the constructed oppositions of reason and emotion, culture and nature, the mind being allied with reason and culture.
Ordinarily, women have been identified with “nature and the sensual body that must be controlled, and men are associated with culture and the mind that controls” (Counihan,
Anthropology 103). Women may have been more closely associated with the body due to
their reproductive capabilities by which women have been historically defined (Sanchez-Grant 78). Due to Western culture’s association of women with the supposedly inferior body and its appetite, this has the unfortunate consequence that women have been portrayed as being “ruled by their bodies, which are regarded as unstable, inherently weak and unreliable, yet simultaneously voracious, threatening” (Day et al. 47).
This construction of the female as body means that the onus falls heavily on women to control themselves. The dichotomy of the mind and body and the particular pressure on women to control their bodies are attitudes that contribute to the make-up of the disease, anorexia nervosa which I will explore more thoroughly in the second chapter of this thesis. The social construction of the female as body and the limitations on female voice and its contribution to the public arena also help to explain why women often use their bodies and what they put into them, or choose not to, as an alternative means of expression and communication.
My discussion of the concept of the body, will lead to various issues of embodiment and embodied subjectivity, whereby individual subjectivities will be understood as socially constituted through the historic and cultural discourses in operation at any given time. This
view stands in opposition to the liberal humanist understanding of the individual as a rational, autonomous and self-contained being who merely reacts to an external environment. Women’s corporeal experience however heavily influences their cultural experiences and by extension their identities. I will therefore discuss how Western, industrialised, patriarchal society as depicted in The Edible Woman impacts on the development of the character Marian’s identity and how this is emblematic of the condition of female identity at the time. The scope of this thesis will remain within white, middleclass, female identity given that this is the kind of female subject depicted in The Edible Woman.
1.3 Outline of Thesis Structure
Given the arguments outlined above, my thesis will have the following structure: the first chapter will provide the context for The Edible Woman, and refer to Betty Friedan’s The
Feminine Mystique as a key source of material. Atwood acknowledges having read Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex prior to writing The Edible Woman and the influence of these texts on Atwood’s work is obvious. In The Feminine Mystique (1963), Friedan explores how women have been subordinated and
reduced to their biological roles, severely limiting their options in life and at the time Friedan was writing, being a housewife and mother were the customary paths for women to follow. Indeed, it was expected that women give up whatever jobs they had when they married. Friedan explores how the lack of options for women at that time stunted their emotional, intellectual and professional growth and prevented women from maturing and cultivating a fully developed identity and sense of self. These factors combined with many others left and continue to leave women with feelings of emptiness and desperation. The combination of severely limited choices, feelings of desperation and of being trapped is expressed through
characters of The Edible Woman, particularly in Marian who has come to a crossroads in her life and must decide which path to take.
I will also demonstrate the parallels between Friedan’s work, Sheila MacLeod’s The
Art of Starvation (1981), and Kim Chernin’s The Hungry Self (1985). Chernin explicitly links
her work to The Feminine Mystique, arguing that over twenty years on from Friedan’s investigation into the plight of desperate housewives, women are still struggling with their self-development. Chernin links women’s struggle for identity with their relationship with food suggesting that many women’s struggles for autonomy and control are expressed through eating disorders, indicated by the rising number of women suffering from them. MacLeod supports Chernin’s assertion that anorexia, specifically, is primarily the sufferer’s misguided attempt at achieving an independent identity and sense of autonomy1.
In the second chapter of the thesis I focus on anorexia nervosa and draw parallels between the reality of this eating disorder and Marian’s form thereof. These parallels will allow me to examine how Marian’s anorexia acts as a form of communication and demonstrates her struggle for an autonomous sense of self in The Edible Woman. Women who suffer from anorexia nervosa refuse to eat, often to the point of starvation, and this malady has been seen to a large extent as a female disorder and interpreted by many as a response to sexist social pressures. Anorexia is “a communicative disorder” and thus can be interpreted in several different lights, as a form of rebellion, resistance or even extreme conformation to society’s standards (Caskey 178).
The main similarities between anorexia and Marian’s literary form of the disease that I will analyse are sufferers’ confusion over ego boundaries and sense of alienation from their own bodies. An anorexic’s confusion over ego boundaries leads to a diminished sense of self and the theme of alienation and disconnectedness from one’s own body will bring me to how
1 Though MacLeod does not explicitly mention the work of Friedan she does cite the situation of the type of woman that Friedan explored as being a contributing factor to the cause of some sufferer’s neurosis.
women are objectified in society and socialised to objectify themselves, particularly in an industrialised, capitalist, consumerist society like that represented in The Edible Woman. This self-objectification is detrimental to men and women but affects women particularly and can contribute to feelings of internal division and a split sense of self. Consumption, in the sense of eating and of purchasing, is used by women to replace having a true sense of political choice. Overall, I will demonstrate how Marian’s anorexia is her way of rebelling against the restrictive gender roles of the 1960s and is part of her struggle to form her own identity.
In the third and final chapter of my thesis I shall examine, in detail, how the metaphor of consumption leads to women being identified with different types of food in The Edible
Woman, and what this signifies. The onset of Marian’s anorexia begins at a dinner with Peter,
when she identifies herself with the meat on his plate. I will use the theme of symbolic cannibalism, in which people metaphorically consume each other, to support my analysis of the metaphor of consumption and to further illustrate how power is enacted in the relationship between the sexes. This section will include a discussion of the gendered nature of food practices and how traditional masculinity is usually associated with meat-eating and hunting. The masculine nature of hunting is relevant to explore the numerous examples of hunting metaphors in the novel used to depict the violent, power-orientated relationship between the sexes and the vulnerable position of women in particular.
In my analysis, I have approached The Edible Woman from primarily a historicist point-of-view and therefore my conclusion will demonstrate how The Edible Woman may be contextualised as a novel of its time. I will also argue that the novel acts as a window onto the effects of contemporary patriarchal culture in Western society on female identity in the twentieth century, or the lack thereof. I will also focus on the conclusion of The Edible
Woman and on whether or not the novel offers up any sort of hope or solution to the female
Chapter One
2.1 The Negative Influence of the Feminine Mystique on Female Characters in The Edible Woman
The predicament of women that Betty Friedan explored in her seminal piece of feminist literature The Feminine Mystique (1963), is clearly a major theme that Atwood scrutinises in
The Edible Woman. Published in 1969, the novel’s release coincided with the burgeoning
movement of second-wave feminism in the Western world, and it was received and understood as a product of the feminist movement. However, in 1965 Atwood wrote that “there was no women’s movement in sight” at the time, thereby arguing that the novel’s themes are protofeminist (8). Despite Atwood’s distancing of herself and her work from overt themes of feminism, she does confess to having read feminist literature, The Feminine
Mystique and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex before writing The Edible Woman, and
Friedan’s exploration of the lack of options for women clearly resonated with Atwood who recognised the same plight for women in early sixties Canada (Atwood 8). The Feminine
Mystique therefore, acts as an intertextual link to The Edible Woman, a novel which I would
argue is in intense dialogue with The Feminine Mystique.
The “feminine mystique” is Friedan’s term for the image of femininity that women in twentieth-century America were under pressure to emulate and to which they were compelled to conform. Friedan realised there was a discrepancy between the reality of women’s lives and this image they were pressured to project, and she set about investigating the origins of this image and how it affected women who tried to live by it. The image of femininity that Friedan examines is that of the happy, suburban housewife. “True, feminine fulfilment” was supposed to be found only in the roles of dutiful housewife and mother (Friedan 18). The roles of wife and mother appear to have been determined by a woman’s biology and supposed inherent nature; indeed, the feminine mystique derives a lot of its power from the
Freudian edict that “anatomy is destiny” meaning that gender is a primary determinant of a person’s main personality traits. The traits often associated with femininity include passivity, receptivity, and being a self-sacrificing and nurturing presence. These traits are (mistakenly) thought to be well-suited to the task of caring for others, especially in Western culture in which self-sacrifice is particularly associated with the institution of maternity (Chernin, The
Hungry Self 126).
All of the female characters in The Edible Woman appear to conform or try to conform to this gendered stereotype. Marian’s friend Clara is a housewife and mother, her flatmate Ainsley plans to become a mother, and Marian’s work colleagues are “all housewives working in their spare time” (Atwood 19). Marian has no other female role models and she can see no other route apart from motherhood open to her either. Although she has a job in consumer research working for Seymour Surveys, the job is evidently a dead end and there is no room for progression for women in the company. Moreover, when Marian enrols in the obligatory pension plan, she feels depressed and panics, fearing that she may be at Seymour Surveys for the rest of her life. Marian even feels envious of Ainsley because “she had an idea of what she wanted to do next” unlike herself (Atwood 17).
For lack of a better alternative, Marian agrees to marry her boyfriend Peter against her better instincts. After she accepts his proposal, Marian justifies her decision to herself, reasoning that:
[o]f course [she had] always assumed through high-school and college that [she] was going to marry someone eventually and have children, everyone does […] But although [she is] sure it was in the back of [her] mind [she] hadn’t consciously expected it to happen so soon or quite the way it did. (Atwood 102)
Later in the novel after Marian has visited Clara and her new-born in hospital, she thinks to herself, “[O]f course it was something she had always planned to do [having children], eventually … But in this room with these white-sheeted outstretched women the possibility was suddenly much too close” (Atwood 128-129). The expression, “of course” in both
sentences is indicative of the seeming inevitability of Marian’s fate, and suggests that any differing from the set path of marriage and domestic bliss has never even occurred to her. Yet the following “but” reveals Marian’s qualms about marriage and motherhood and her growing sense of unease at the speed at which it is happening to her. The phrase “of course” is repeated numerous times throughout the narrative in relation to Marian’s behaviour and future, indicating how completely she has accepted the usual behaviour expected of women.
It is not only Marian who displays discomfort at the thought of being a housewife and mother. Her friend Clara frequently makes “bitter remarks about being ‘just a housewife’” while referring to her baby as a “little leech” and “all covered with suckers like an octopus”, and likens her children to “barnacles encrusting a ship and limpets clinging to a rock” (Atwood 38; 31; 36). Clara’s passive aggressive metaphors for her children, likening them to repellent, parasitic creatures that will not leave her alone, betrays her discontent in her role as a live-in caretaker. Marian’s feelings of unease and Clara’s obvious dissatisfaction imply that the happy housewife image of femininity does not come as naturally to women as some might believe.
Friedan argues that Freud’s analysis of femininity, much of what “the feminine mystique” derives its’ legitimation from, is mistaken, and this would explain Marian’s misgivings about her future. Friedan argues that Freud’s original theory of femininity was deeply sexist and based on the assumption that women are biologically inferior to men, a common attitude in Freud’s time. Unfortunately, Freud was a prisoner of the cultural framework of his times and, like many other psychoanalysts, “made the mistake of assuming from observations of women who did not have the education and the freedom to play their full part in the world, that it was women’s essential nature to be passive, conformist, dependent, fearful, child-like” (Friedan 326). This impression of women’s essential nature gives credence to “the old prejudices – women are animals, less than human, unable to think
like men, born merely to breed and serve men”, and Friedan argues that these prejudices manifested themselves in a different guise, under the re-emergence of Freudian theory in the 1940s (Friedan 103).
Not surprisingly, considering the sexism that underpins the notion of a feminine mystique, Friedan found that suburban housewives were suffering from “the problem that has no name”, and which brought with it unexplained feelings of dissatisfaction, emptiness and boredom (19). Of the countless women that Friedan interviewed, many described feelings of discontent and desperation that they could not understand. Although many housewives were apparently living the perfect life and had fulfilled their destiny by finding a good husband, and securing a lovely home and children to take care of, they were still not happy. Friedan identified the core of this discontent as a “problem of identity–a stunting or evasion of growth that is perpetuated by the feminine mystique” (77). Women needed something more in their lives than living for other people, their husband and children.
This stunting of growth was caused by the fact that women “chose” to be mothers and housewives to the exclusion of everything else. Most women no longer entertained career ambitions, interest in higher education (as could be seen by the number of women who dropped out of college to get married), politics or anything outside the domestic sphere. There were several reasons why women accepted this limited lifestyle. Friedan based part of this acceptance on the image of women perpetuated in the mass media, as these popular images not only mirrored but helped to create women’s identity.
Friedan found by analysing women’s magazines and the fiction stories in them that, in the decades before 1950, having a career symbolised “the passionate search for individual identity”, “doing something, being somebody yourself, not just existing in and through others” (Friedan 40). However, from the 1950s onwards, the life of the mind was absent from women’s magazines and there was almost no mention of the world beyond the home (Friedan
36). Women were portrayed as passive, childlike, content in the domestic sphere and only concerned with their looks and how to hang onto a man. The transformation in the image of women can be explained by the fact that the housewife-mother image of women was largely created by male writers and editors of women’s magazines (Friedan 54). After men returned home at the end of World War Two, many female writers dropped out of the field and became home-makers themselves and the male writers who filled their positions had obviously been dreaming about home and a cosy life of domesticity after the horrors they had endured (Friedan 54). The creation of the housewife image could also be seen as a form of propaganda to persuade women in general to return to the traditional roles they had before the war so that men could return to their own previous roles2.
When the feminine mystique is operative, that is the nurturing, housewife-mother image, women were not permitted to want goals outside of living for their husband and children, and the notion of a separate sense of self was perceived as a threat. In previous generations, anything that kept women from realizing their full potential was “a problem to be solved”, however, the feminine mystique contains the notion that anything that threatened women’s adjustment to their feminine role was a problem, such as an education or a career (Friedan 61). Friedan argued that American culture “does not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfil their potentialities as human beings” (77); even though many behavioural scientists had identified the need to grow as “the basic human need, and that interference with it, in any dimension, is the source of psychic trouble” (117).
Friedan explained women’s willingness to accept the limitations of the feminine mystique as being the result of a fear of growing up and a lack of female role models. Women did not have a “private image” to guide them were they to not end up in the same limited position as their mothers (Friedan 72). At the same time, the most accessible public
2 For further reading and insight into how women have been portrayed in mass media in the past 50 years and the effect this has had on women, I recommend Susan J. Douglas’ Where the Girls are: Growing Up Female
images from which women could obtain guidance from was the happy housewife image that proliferated in magazines and advertising. For lack of imagination and possible alternatives, and to avoid the terror of growing up and deciding a future for themselves, many women followed the easiest pathway of marriage and motherhood. Thus, the feminine mystique infantilised women and encouraged them to ignore the question of their own identities (Friedan 71).
Friedan makes it obvious throughout her work how ill-fitting the singular role of housewife is through her repetition of the word “adjustment” which she uses to describe how women adapt to their roles. Significantly, this repetitive use of “adjustment” is mirrored in
The Edible Woman, as for example, when Clara tells Marian that marriage “takes adjustment”
and how after realising her husband Joe was not actually Jesus Christ, Clara has come to regard him as just “one of the minor saints” (Atwood 131). “Marian didn’t know what to say. She found Clara’s attitude towards Joe both complacent and embarrassing: it was sentimental, like the love stories in the back numbers of women’s magazines” (Atwood 131). Marian’s reference to the stories in women’s magazines also seems to allude to or bear out Freidan’s research in The Feminine Mystique. In other words, Clara’s exaggerated idolisation of Joe and her adjustment to this attitude implies her subordinated status in relation to him and confirms Friedan’s suspicion of the impact magazines like this have on women.
It is Joe himself who perfectly sums up the feminine mystique and the predicament of women of his generation. At the party that Peter throws, Joe talks to Marian about Clara:
“I worry about her a lot, you know,” Joe continued. “I think it’s a lot harder for her than for most other women; I think it’s harder for any woman who’s been to university. She gets the idea she has a mind, her professors pay attention to what she has to say, they treat her like a thinking human being; when she gets married, her core gets invaded […]
Her core. The centre of her personality, the thing she’s built up; her image of herself, if you like […] Her feminine role and her core are really in opposition, her feminine role demands passivity from her […]
So she allows her core to get taken over by the husband. And when the kids come, she wakes up one morning and discovers she doesn’t have anything left inside,
she’s hollow, she doesn’t know who she is anymore; her core has been destroyed.” He shook his head gently and sipped at his drink. “I can see it happening with my own female students. But it would be futile to warn them […]
“Of course it doesn’t help to realise all that,” Joe was saying. “It happens, whether you realise it or not. Maybe women shouldn’t be allowed to go to university at all; then they wouldn’t always be feeling later on that they’ve missed out on the life of the mind. (Atwood 235-236)
Joe explicitly states that the passive feminine role and a woman’s actual personality and identity are at odds with each other. He recognises that in giving complete devotion to her husband and children, a woman is left empty and hollow and has lost her identity outside of her roles of mother and wife.
Disappointingly, far from wanting to change the condition of women, Joe sees this fate as inevitable, emphasised by yet another use of the phrase “of course”. Instead, he thinks it would be better if women were not allowed to go to university at all, essentially so they would not know what other areas of life they were missing out on. Joe’s view that women do not need to attend university can partly be attributed to his identification of women with the body rather than the mind. This association is implied by Joe’s notion that women get the idea they have a mind at university and are treated like thinking human beings (Atwood 235). His turn of phrase suggests that he does not actually think that women do possess a mind equal to any man’s, but rather that university gives them the idea this is true.
In this chapter, I have demonstrated in detail how heavily The Edible Woman is influenced by The Feminine Mystique. The characters in The Edible Woman, male and female, are all restrained in their thinking by the limitations of “the feminine mystique” and the female characters consequently suffer a lack of identity. I will now demonstrate how this struggle for identity is related to food and eating practices, and how women use their bodies to communicate in this struggle.
2.2 The Textuality of the Female Body
There is a high degree of consensus among scholars that the themes of the female body and female identity are distinct preoccupations throughout Atwood’s oeuvre. In the introduction, I outlined how women have become aligned with the unruly body that needs to be controlled; as such the female body becomes a site of oppression in patriarchal society and becomes the means through which “patriarchy exerts control over women” (Sanchez-Grant 78). I have also explained how the strong identification of women with the body has led to the body being used as a means of expression for women. In consequence, the female body can be used as a “figurative text” (Davies 61).
Atwood’s work often revolves around gender politics and focuses on fictional female narratives that highlight the position of women “within power structures that seek to contain them” (Davies 61). In Atwood’s writing, the female body is used to express the anxieties related to the politics and wider power structure of the socio-culture within the fictional worlds that Atwood creates. Madeleine Davies observation that “Atwood’s female bodies are inevitably coded bodies that tell the story of the subject’s experience within a political economy that seeks to consume them [and] convert them into consumers in turn” is particularly apt in relation to The Edible Woman, in which Marian is the subject and object of various forms of consumption and her anorexia becomes a form of bodily protest against this condition (Davies 60).
Hélène Cixous’ theory of writing the feminine connects textuality with the body, and so provides a useful lens through which to examine the female body as text in Atwood’s writing. Indeed, both Johanna Lahikainen and Madeleine Davies have commented on how Atwood’s writing echoes Cixous’ ideas in her influential essay “The Laugh of the Medusa”, published in 1975 (Lahikainen 35; Davies 59). The theory she sketches out in that essay emphasises the importance of language in influencing one’s experience and perception of the
world and the self. As language is not a neutral form of expression it has been perceived as a tool that reinforces patriarchal oppression and the phallocentric system. Roberta Rubenstein supports this theory, explaining that because women are not in a position of power “their perspective remains unarticulated” and ignored which is then reflected in the form of discourse (7).
In contrast to the language adapted for a man’s world, Cixous advocates a form of women’s writing better suited to describing the female experience accurately. Cixous bases her feminine language on the connection of the body and textuality, arguing that women must become more connected with their bodies, fully inhabiting them and writing about this experience in order to create texts “capable of challenging historical and political constructions, of subverting the dominant linguistic order, and of representing themselves [accurately]” (Davies 59).
I have already explained how women’s historic identification with the body may lead to the body being used a tool of communication. In addition, “the patriarchal nature of language and its inability to accommodate female experience” also prompts women to “choose an alternative, non-verbal form of communication” such as the body (Parker 358). The inadequacy of words relates to Atwood’s conviction that politics “has to do with what kind of conversations you have with people, and what you feel free to say to someone, what you don’t feel free to say” (qtd. in Somacarrera 44). There are several points in The Edible
Woman where Marian does not feel that she can speak freely to the men in her life,
particularly Peter, and actively censors herself.
This active self-censoring is also evident in the character of Ainsley when she alters the way she acts in front of Len in order to seduce him. Marian notices Ainsley’s “little-girls-should-be-seen-and-not-heard act” which, disturbingly, Len finds very attractive in a potential partner (Atwood 75). In conversation, Len treats Ainsley “as though she was a little
girl, patiently explaining things to her and impressing her with stories” (Atwood 119). Even though Ainsley tires of this patronising behaviour she cannot say anything back as “it was necessary for her mind to appear as vacant as her face. Her hands were tied. She had constructed her image and now she had to maintain it” (Atwood 119). The silencing of Ainsley’s voice and ergo her true opinion for the sake of conforming to the “proper” (though restrictive) behaviour expected of women is indicative of her subordinated status. In remaining mute, the female characters in The Edible Woman become complicit in their own subordination and help to accomplish “the aim of absolute power [which] is to silence the voice, to abolish the words, so that the only voices and words left are those of the ones in power”, namely men (Somacarrera 51).
2.3 Interpreting the Hungry Female Body
I have elucidated why the body is sometimes a more suitable, or the only available, means of expression for women other than words, and how the female body can be used as a figurative text in general, and I now want to focus on the anorexic female body as text. Sheila MacLeod, a recovering anorexic, contends that “in dealing with anorexia nervosa we are dealing with metaphor – sometimes a startlingly apt form of metaphor” (MacLeod 68). She cites Karl Polanyi’s theory that “the relationship between mind and body has the same logical structure as the relationship between clues and the image to which they are pointing” (qtd. in MacLeod 67). Body language and symptoms act as clues to the inner state of a person and can be interpreted as metaphors for what a person wants to express. This then is why MacLeod decides to treat her own body as a text to analyse, in the interests of better understanding herself and her condition.
Although the range of factors that contribute to the origins of anorexia are complex and the list thereof long, there is a unanimous agreement amongst researchers that the aim of anorexia is to “seize selfhood [and] gain a sense of self”, in other words, an individual, autonomous identity (Pascual 342). The anorexic female body attempts to express a woman’s struggle for individual identity.
Connecting the themes of identity and the body as text together, Norman Holland proposes that “identity is the unity I find in a person when I look at him as if he were a text” (qtd. in MacLeod 68). MacLeod follows on from this idea and contends that it is unlikely to find a unity of text in the anorexic, with division of the self being a prominent symptom of anorexia, which I will explore further in the second chapter (68). Rather than unity, “anorexic speech (or, more literally, behaviour) consists of two quite separate and often contradictory texts, and that it is only by studying them both, in order to fit them together and so come up with an amended text, that we can understand what is going on inside the anorexic herself” (68). MacLeod refers to these two texts as the apparent text and the subtext.
In keeping with her discussion of text and body language, MacLeod acknowledges the inadequacy of speech for self-expression. MacLeod examines the diaries she kept at the onset of her anorexia and notices that she does not mention her eating habits at all. It was when she was writing the diaries that MacLeod began refusing food, skipping meals and, when eating could not be avoided, only having small portions of food. MacLeod recognises that she could not describe her actions because “[i]f [she] had used words, [she would] have had to think more carefully about what [she] was doing […] It was what was going on in [her] mind that had to be kept secret […] on pain of self-understanding” (MacLeod 71-72).
That secrecy and self-deception is a common trait in anorexics may be observed in the
The Edible Woman’s Marian. The onset of Marian’s anorexia surprises her and appears to be
has a mounting fear that “this thing, this refusal of her mouth to eat, was malignant; that it would spread; that slowly the circle now dividing the devourable from that non-devourable would become smaller and smaller, that the objects available to her would be excluded one by one” (Atwood 153). Marian’s description of “the refusal of her mouth to eat” implies a detachment from her body and her actions as well as signalling a lack of control over her body, again, all feelings that are symptomatic of anorexia. Notwithstanding Marian’s apparent concern about her non-eating, she still engages in self-deception as her body is trying to tell her that she is not happy with the current direction her life is taking but she refuses to listen to it or examine her true feelings. Marian also engages in secretive behaviour as she tries to hide her condition from those around her.
After outlining her premise of the anorexic female body as figurative text, MacLeod goes on to examine the condition in-depth and what drives sufferers of anorexia. MacLeod agrees that “the struggle for individual identity [is] central to the phenomenon of anorexia nervosa” (38). MacLeod cites Erik H. Erikson, the developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst, who asserts that the capacity for “autonomous choice” is fundamental to a healthy identity (qtd. in MacLeod 65). Erikson recognises the struggle for autonomy, or the “will to be oneself”, is a fundamental part of the second stage of identity development in a child (qtd. in Chernin 100). Equally, as a person gets older, an “individual must be able to convince himself (sic.) that the next step is up to him and, no matter where he is staying or going, he always has the choice of leaving or turning in the opposite direction if he chooses to do so” (qtd. in MacLeod 65). MacLeod uses this to underline her point that “if anorexia is about identity in general, it is also specifically and most importantly about autonomy” (65). Generally, “autonomy and femininity have been shown to be irreconcilable”, or rather autonomy and the conventional image of femininity as passive, dependent and helpless is irreconcilable (MacLeod 102). Following on from this, it is easy to see how anorexia is
predominantly a female-oriented disease, as in past generations, women’s independence and autonomy have been limited in patriarchal society, so the body becomes a woman’s only bid for control and self-determination.
Kim Chernin would appear to agree with MacLeod that eating disorders express a struggle for identity in the individual; though she came to this conclusion through a personal realisation brought about by reading Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Chernin, who was suffering from an eating disorder at the time, recognised the same feelings of emptiness and incompleteness that the women in Friedan’s work complained of. Friedan proposed that these feelings were brought about by “not knowing who or what one is or might wish to become” (Chernin, The Hungry Self 16). Chernin argues that, twenty years later, even though women had more civil rights and improved access to opportunities than previous generations, they were still struggling with the burden of self-development and this struggle was coming to the surface in the form of problematic eating patterns. Anorexia was becoming more prevalent in society in the late 1970s to early 1980s and was no longer confined to adolescents but could be seen in much older women as well.
Diane Salvatore suggested that the “new conditions of social, political, and institutional freedom offered to women” acted as a kind of “sensory overload. With too many options, [women] panicked and retreated into old roles or new apathy, one that took for granted too many freedoms […] without acting on them, or […] really understanding them” (qtd. in Chernin, The Hungry Self 31). Moreover, a marked increase in the incidence of anorexia normally coincides with sudden changes in the social position of women (MacLeod 163; Caskey 177). Hence as the level of work activity expected of women comes closer to that expected of men:
[g]rowing girls can experience this liberation as a demand and feel that they have to do something outstanding. Many of [Hilde Bruch’s anorexic] patients have expressed the feeling […] that there were too many choices and they had been afraid of not choosing correctly. (Caskey 177)
Referring again to psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson (mentioned earlier in my discussion of MacLeod and the importance of autonomy in identity), he recognised that an identity crisis designates a “necessary turning point, a crucial moment, when development must move one way or another, marshalling resources of growth, recovery and further differentiation” (qtd. in Chernin, The Hungry Self 22).
Chernin builds on this, arguing that “when an eating disorder develops at what might otherwise be a turning point in a woman’s life, this marshalling of resources for growth is not taking place. Instead of freedom and liberation we find obsession, and in it the underlying quest for identity and development is drowned” (Chernin, The Hungry Self 22). Chernin then goes on to describe how in her own research it had become clear to her that “the onset of an eating disorder coincides with an underlying developmental crisis” (The Hungry Self 23). Chernin explains that an identity crisis can happen at any age, as due to the increase in opportunities older women have been able to return to school or take up new careers, interests and challenges. In accordance with Chernin’s theory, the onset of Marian’s eating disorder begins after a major event, when her boyfriend proposes and she must decide whether to become a housewife or reject the offer of marriage and risk becoming an outcast.
Chernin also proposes that the female struggle for identity being expressed through eating practices is appropriate, not only because of the traditional association of women with food but because “all the issues of development through which the child passes between infancy and adolescence are negotiated in a first, essential form through the relationship to food and feeding” (Chernin, The Hungry Self 104). Food is essential to an individual’s identity formation because it is through refusing or demanding certain food and drinks that children begin to develop and express their individual taste forming part of their autonomous identity (Polley 25).
Although concerns about problematic eating habits has most commonly been identified as a woman’s issue in recent years, at the time of writing The Edible Woman, eating disorders were not the cultural phenomenon they are today, making Atwood’s work almost portentous. Davies states that, “[w]ith no power within the political economy Atwood’s women fight to reclaim authorship of their own identities via a rewriting and reclaiming of their bodies” (62). Although the condition anorexia nervosa is clearly a self-destructive means of reclaiming the body, this is nonetheless the method that Marian uses in the novel, making an analysis of the condition a useful method for analysing the text. Now I have demonstrated the importance of the female body as figurative text and how anorexia nervosa is just one type of eating disorder that expresses the struggle for identity, I will examine the disease in greater detail and demonstrate how aspects of the disease relate to Marian in The Edible Woman. While I will examine concrete symptoms of the disease, I will also ground my analysis from a feminist perspective.
Chapter Two: Literary Anorexia
Anorexia nervosa is complex and it aetiology has been ascribed to several different factors, including vanity, disturbed relationships with others including family members, trauma, and traditional thinking derived from Cartesian dualism. However, the social and political context of an anorexic is also highly relevant to their condition and many psychoanalysts and psychologists list gender-related causes as contributing to anorexia, including ambivalence about one’s gender, and stress and confusion over gendered role demands. In the case of women, this may also involve the daughter’s struggle to separate herself from the mother and a girl’s inadequate rite of passage to maturity, all factors influenced by social attitudes. The fact that eating disorders like anorexia and compulsive over-eating, two versions of the same obsession with food, are largely confined to the female population suggests that the problem is related to the experience of being female in society. Although there are male sufferers of anorexia, they constitute a very small minority and it has been suggested that male sufferers of the disease share certain aspects of the feminine experience such as subordination and the lack of a suitable outlet for self-expression (Counihan, Anthropology 112).
The feminist approach to the disease links anorexia with the social, political, economic and sexual oppression of women, focusing on a woman’s relationship with her body in the context of a phallocentric society, and the problematic attitudes this environment necessarily facilitates (MacLeod 21). A multitude of authors have taken this approach to analysing eating disorders, including Hilde Bruch, Chernin, Carole Counihan, MacLeod and Susie Orbach, and have found that women’s issues with food are linked to the difficulties involved in functioning as a woman in a patriarchal society (Counihan, Anthropology 77; MacLeod 181; Orbach 15). Feelings of powerlessness and ambivalence about the traditional feminine roles form part of the basis of anorexia, hence the disease may be seen as a response to and struggle against the narrow conditions for woman in patriarchal culture. In addition
and in accordance with the premise that anorexia is symptomatic of a struggle for identity, the aforementioned authors agree that one of the main underlying causes of anorexia is a poorly developed sense of self, and they recommend different techniques for developing a strong, positive female identity in order to cope with the problems of womanhood (Counihan,
Anthropology 89).
The feminist approach to anorexia is appropriate for analysing The Edible Woman as the anorexic symptoms that Marian exhibits are indicative of her lack of identity which is exacerbated, or perhaps precipitated, by her societal conditions. The symptoms I will examine include Marian’s fear of fat and, by association, of mature femininity, her boundary confusion, and the internal division and alienation she experiences. The subject of internal division will lead me to a discussion of the split way in which Marian views herself and how this is caused by Cartesian ideology as well as the objectification of women in a capitalistic society wherein women are taught to inhabit the roles of consumer and consumed.
3.1 Fear of Fat and Femininity
Noella Caskey describes anorexia as a “phobic fear of fat” though a more accurate description would be a fear of the social meanings attached to fat, rather than fat itself (175). Fat and femininity are closely interlinked as the two things “cannot be separated physiologically” (Caskey 176). Caskey explains that there’s an “intimate interplay between fat cells and female hormones … throughout a woman’s life [which] for the most part, lies beyond the bounds of her own control” (176). For example, women’s body weight naturally contains a higher percentage of body fat than men, the distribution of which is controlled by hormones with certain areas such as the hips and thighs predisposed to extra fat. A certain amount of fat in particular areas of the body, including the ones aforementioned, is necessary
for menstruation, and there is usually unexplained weight gain in pregnant women. Also, fuller figures have been thought to be subconscious indicators of a women’s fertility and therefore attractive to the male. So, fat designates femininity in the sexually mature woman. This does not seem frightening in itself but the negative social values attached to femininity mean that fat takes on an altogether more sinister meaning.
It is widely agreed that anorexia can signify “a denial of sexuality and gender” and that “anorexics retreat from female sexuality by becoming childlike and asexual” (MacLeod 7; Counihan, Anthropology 80). Anorexic’s may want to reject female sexuality because in Western culture, female sexuality is degraded and objectified. Women are assessed as physical objects first, and judged on their appearance and how sexually appealing it is. The female anorexic may also reject mature sexuality as “women’s sexuality is linked to their generative power” (Counihan, Anthropology 82). “The anorexic’s rejection of fat is a rejection of the sexually mature feminine as represented by the maternal image” (Caskey 187). The representation of sexually mature femininity by the mother image indicates how intertwined femininity is with childbirth and the caring role. MacLeod’s experience of anorexia supports this hypothesis as she explains that “[t]he inescapable fact is that I didn’t want to be a woman […] I didn’t want to grow up […] To me, the adult world was not a place where the individual could act freely and achieve growth” (70). In patriarchal society, such as that depicted in The Edible Woman, a woman’s growth is easily stunted by marriage and motherhood and not attending to her own needs.
There are several reasons then for the rejection of mature femininity. Firstly, in societies such as North America, Canada and the UK where men function primarily as wage-earners and labourers and there is a higher value attached to wage-earning than child-rearing and nurturing, fat becomes an indicator of division of labour and lower social status (Caskey 177). A higher value is attached to wage-earning in capitalist societies because everyone is
defined by their job so women’s work in the home and family is seen as separate from the production process and therefore devalued. Although mothers carry a certain amount of power within the family, it is still undermined and devalued in relation to any man’s role.
Secondly, in 1960s Canada motherhood was seen as being more or less inevitable and was simply expected of women and stigma against single, childless women limited choice, making the role coercive and oppressive. Anorexia often occurs during adolescence when girls learn about their social roles and what is expected of adult women. Psychiatrist and family therapist, Selvini Palazolli “emphasises the manner in which the adolescent girl ‘is exposed to lewd looks, subjected to menstruation, about to be penetrated in sexual embraces, to be invaded by the foetus, to be suckled by a child, etc.’” (qtd. in MacLeod 78). MacLeod believes that Palazolli’s observation “describes what the anorexic girl believes to lie in store for her as a woman: a passive role, a position of helplessness, a loss of self. It is what she has experienced already, but with the addition of responsibility, pain, and bodily suffering exemplified in the bearing of children and the shedding of blood” (78).
The bodily responsibilities of womanhood would naturally appear overwhelming and burdensome to a teenage girl and fat can come to signify the hard, frightening responsibilities of mature womanhood. Additionally, in western culture, men are defined as active in sex and women passive. “Women have sex done to them, receive semen, and get pregnant, while men do sex, ejaculate semen, and impregnate. The male processes are active and superior; the female passive and inferior” (Counihan, Anthropology 66). This cultural attitude towards sex deepens the passive role expected of women.
Palazolli’s observation on women’s bodily processes brings me to the third reason as to why anorexics reject mature femininity. The bodily processes entailed in womanhood can be frightening because there is a greater tendency in women than in men to confusion over ego boundaries and “a lack of sense of separateness from the world” (Rubenstein 6). “The
boundaries of the body can symbolise the separateness of the self from others and from the external world” (Counihan, Anthropology 62). As a woman’s biosexual experiences (menstruation, coitus, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation) all involve different violations of bodily boundaries, these acts can be symbolic threats to the psychological integrity of the self and a to woman’s sense of individual identity (Counihan, Anthropology 72)3. The act of eating has associations with female bodily processes such as intercourse and reproduction because these activities all share certain biopsychological attributes such as their “contributions to life and growth [and] their passing through body boundaries” (Counihan,
Anthropology 62-63). Hence eating and sexual acts can pose symbolic threats to a woman’s
body boundaries and by extension to her sense of identity, leading her to decline or abstain from food.
Ultimately then, anorexia can signal a fear of growing up that some women have and the skinny body may represent “freedom from a reproductive destiny and a construction of femininity seen as constraining and suffocating” (Counihan, Anthropology 74). As anorexia requires the denial of biology, it necessarily rejects the notion of biology as destiny (MacLeod 90). Freidan argued that the feminine mystique infantilised women and led them to ignore the question of their identity and to avoid the effort involved in self-development and maturing. Anorexia can be seen as achieving the same ends Friedan describes, a halting of physical and by extension psychological female self-development, whilst at the same time being a method of asserting control and autonomy. Unfortunately, the anorexic’s struggle for autonomy is misdirected and the denial of food becomes a central focus of the anorexic’s identity, an “important analogue for the self”, at the cost of everything else, food being the
3 Maternity, a sign of mature femininity, is the “most dramatic alteration of boundaries, both physical and psychological, for a female” (Rubenstein 97). The pregnant woman is invaded and occupied by an “other”. Julie Kristeva describes the experience of pregnancy as “the radical ordeal of the splitting of the subject: redoubling up of the body, separation and coexistence of the self and of an other” (Rubenstein 97). For Atwood’s female characters who already experience themselves as “split”, pregnancy is perceived as a doubly threatening condition” as can be seen in the case of Marian who experiences intense feelings of internal division and finds the idea of motherhood repulsive (Rubenstein 97). These qualities are equally applicable to the female anorexic.
only thing she has any control over (Counihan, Anthropology 98). Although the anorexic wants to be an autonomous individual she has “a fear of all that is involved in growing-up and achieving physical maturation” (MacLeod 7).
From her own experience with anorexia, MacLeod recognised that she must have unconsciously wanted to grow up; in order to have more freedom and autonomy, yet she was determined not to because, as she explains, “the models of potential adulthood with which I was presented were either repugnant or impossible to attain” (60). The only roles available to women that MacLeod observed categorised women as the true type and the failed type, the true type being personified by motherhood and destined to bear children as long as she was able, whether she wanted to or not (78). Whereas the failed type, personified by the teachers at MacLeod’s school, were single and childless so were assumed to be desperately unhappy. To sum up, the true woman “having found her man, was forced to accept that biology was indeed destiny” whereas the failed woman was just a “miserable biological failure” (MacLeod 78-79). These two-dimensional roles allow for no complexity and do not offer alternative fulfilling life choices.
These two categories of women as fulfilled and unfulfilled is reflected in The Edible
Woman. For example, Marian’s family are relieved that she is getting married and are no
longer “worried she would turn into a high-school teacher or a maiden aunt or a dope addict or a female executive, or that she would undergo some shocking physical transformation, like
developing muscles and a deep voice or growing moss” (Atwood 174). The bombastic equation of a single woman with a drug addict, and of female power (implied by the job of executive) with physical male characteristics, is suggestive of how stigmatised independent women would have been and of the social pressures women were under.
Although Marian gives into social convention at first and agrees to marriage, she finds the role of motherhood repugnant. This repulsion can be detected in Marian’s attitude to her
seemingly eternally pregnant friend Clara who she sees as “a swollen mass of flesh with a tiny pinhead […] a semi-person”, and whose unborn child she refers to as a “parasitic growth” (Atwood 114-115). Marian’s description of Clara’s pregnant state as a “swollen mass of flesh” shows how Marian sees women in terms of their body rather than their mind as well as suggesting a link between fat and mature femininity (Atwood 115). Marian sees Clara’s baby as encroaching on Clara’s identity and cannot see Clara as a full person until she has given birth. This is emphasised by the fact that Marian buys roses after Clara has given birth, as “a welcoming-back gift for the real Clara, once more in uncontended possession of her own frail body” (Atwood 115). The representation of pregnancy as parasitic is recalls Simone de Beauvoir who described motherhood as “maternal servitude” (55).
Marian’s fear of mature femininity and the responsibilities it brings can also be observed in her attitude towards her flatmate Ainsley, and to her peers at work. In the scene where Ainsley comforts Len after he has found out that she is pregnant, Marian is “coldly revolted” by their display and imagines Ainsley to be “getting a layer of blubber on her soul already […] Soon she would be fat all over” (Atwood 160). Marian’s vision of a fat Ainsley now that she’s newly pregnant explicitly links obesity with impregnation and reveals Marian’s anxieties concerning motherhood.
The link between fat and maternity is also made at Marian’s office Christmas party. Marian’s fear of fat is obvious when she examines the appearance of one of her colleagues and notices “the roll of fat pushed up across Mrs. Gundridge’s back by the top of her corset, the ham-like bulge of thigh […] the blotch of varicose veins glimpsed at the back of one plump crossed leg, the way her jowls jellied when she chewed” (Atwood 167). Mrs Gundridge no longer sounds like a person in this description but rather a huge unattractive blob of flesh. Although Marian’s actual mother is mentioned only once in the novel, the women surrounding Marian are all associated with maternity including her colleagues. The
“motherly-looking women” Marian works with, such as Mrs Gundridge, are predominantly housewives working in their spare time and reflect Marian’s potential future (Atwood 24). In a more relaxed setting than work, like the office Christmas party, Marian finds her colleagues indistinguishable from the “vast anonymous ocean of housewives whose minds they were employed to explore” (Atwood 166). Fat, in this context, represents the lack of individuality among the women and the uniformity in their identity. The use of water imagery in describing the women is also indicative of the fluidity of the women’s ego boundaries. I will now explore the issue of ego boundaries in women in more detail and how anxieties about ego boundaries manifest in psychological illnesses such as anorexia.
3.2 The Horror of Boundary Confusion
As previously noted, women are much more prone to suffering from boundary confusion than men, and hence have a weaker sense of self. This issue has been documented by numerous psychoanalysts and psychologists who explain that the high number of women suffering from boundary confusion has “social roots in the development of a feminine psychology” (Orbach 76).
This is due to several factors including women’s biosexual experiences which all involve some form of body boundary violation. The process of pregnancy in particular can be akin to an invasion of the body threatening the sense of self. In addition to this, in Western culture, there is a prevailing attitude that male and female bodies are not “reciprocally permeable and that women’s bodies are more vulnerable than men’s” (Counihan,
Anthropology 61). The permeability of women’s bodies supposedly represents their “weak
female bodies encourage the association of women with the denigrated body and contribute to the hierarchical relationship between men and women (Counihan 61).
Secondly, “the female role requires the woman to be a nurturing, caring person who gives emotional sustenance to the people around her” (Orbach 76-77)4. Housewives and mothers of the late 1950s and early 1960s were “actively dissuaded from developing [their] autonomy economically” and instead were expected to “devote enormous energy to the lives of others” (Orbach 77; Orbach 20). Orbach argues that the woman in a domestic partnership is “required to merge interests with those of others and seek her fulfilment in adjusting her needs and desires to others – mainly lovers and children with whom she is centrally involved” (77). Due to the negation of her own needs, and the expectation of mothers in Western culture to be self-sacrificing and all-giving, the distinction between a woman’s life and the lives of those close to her easily become blurred (Orbach 20). Orbach describes boundaries as “the amount of space one takes up in the world – where one begins and one ends” and that not knowing how to make space for oneself is a common theme for women due to their high involvement in other’s lives (76).
4 This emotional sustenance is often offered in the form of food, especially in the housewife role in which cooking can be interpreted as an act of love and caring and mealtimes are the site of family construction and cohesion.
The caring qualities associated with the giving of food can be seen when Marian takes care of Ainsley when she is hungover, Clara when she is pregnant, and especially of the men in her life. Marian dishes up ice-cream for Peter which he takes as a “sympathetic gesture”, after his rant about women tricking men into marriage (Atwood 64). Marian strokes Peter’s hair as he eats his ice-cream. This comforting, maternal image in the context of an adult relationship equates adult men with children that need taking care of. This equation of men with children is also implied when Len drinks from a beer bottle and “his mouth, pursed budlike around the bottleneck, was for a moment strangely infantile” (Atwood 156). This image is reminiscent of breast-feeding. The equation of adult men with children reinforces the maternal, care-taking role of the woman in her relationships. Marian also has this maternal dynamic with Duncan as she sees it as her duty to mother and rescue him, dragging him into manhood.
Although women are seen as in charge of the organisation of food, in actuality “men may wield power by controlling food purchases and claiming the authority to judge the meals women cook. They can disparage the food or demand certain dishes. Men can refuse to provide food or to eat” (Counihan, Anthropology 11). This dynamic is presented between Peter and Marian when she cooks him a dinner of “frozen peas and smoked meat, the kind you boil for three minutes in the plastic packages” because Peter decided against going out for dinner (Atwood 63). Although Peter is the host in the situation it is still Marian’s responsibility to provide food and Peter is unimpressed that she has not made a meal from scratch. Rather than expressing her displeasure with Peter’s ungrateful attitude, she suppresses her true feelings for the sake of Peter. This exchange around food indicates the balance of power between Peter and Marian, tipped in Peter’s favour, and is representative of power balance between the sexes in wider society. Although Peter purportedly does not want to be married, he attempts to imitate the social conventions of marriage in his relationship with Marian and her desires are not as important as his. The organisation of food is important then in the role of the housewife.
