An Analysis of The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

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An Analysis of The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

The Le Deuxième Sexe by Simone De Beauvoir was written about twenty-one years before Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman and yet it summarizes the gender inequality encountered by the human female species. In De Beauvoir’s book, she takes apart the basis of the gender inequality and the myths and stereotyping attached to being a woman. Atwood’s novel, on the other hand, symbolically identifies the stereotyping that women have to endure their whole lives as the second sex. This writing’s objective is to analyze Atwood’s novel, The Edible Woman using the theories discussed by De Beauvoir.

Marian McAlpin is the main character in the novel. Other characters try to slot her into a “box” or place her in a label which drives her to almost self destruct. We have the “office virgin” group represented by Lucy, Amy and Millie, the “settled and procreating” stereotype- Clara Bates and “the liberal feminist” stereotype- Ainsley Tewce and the “lonely spinster”. All the stereo types (except Ainsley) wanted the main character Marian to get married to a decent guy because time is “ticking”. Based on de Beauvoir’s analysis that biological differences are not the standards for superiority of male over female, Atwood confronts the issue of the expectations that society have of women. Women are viewed as complete when they settle down and become mothers. Ainsley’s quest for a child of her own without a marriage is also one of those paradoxes, Ainsley still wants to have a child despite her beliefs that women should go against expectations. She is “proto-feminist” and believes that women should have the right to choose and yet she is the one who tells Marian that “she (Marian) has turned her back ...

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...ountered in the novel when finally Marian discovers Peter’s true self. She runs to Duncan and also saw Duncan as manipulative. Marian has been conditioned all her life to follow the proper timeline for a woman. She followed her parents, she followed the landlady’s ideal of a clean home, she followed her boyfriend’s expectations and proposal. Although she strived to rebel, she still followed what was expected in a relationship where she attends to a ”wounded soul” in the character of Duncan.

Lyons, Brooke. , 1992. Using other people’s Dreadful Childhoods. In Ingersoll, EG (ed) Margaret Atwood. Conversation, London: Virago, 221-33

Alleyne, Richard, January 20, 2012.Couple Raise Child as Gender Neutral; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9028479/Couple-raise-child-as-gender-neutral-to-avoid-stereotyping.html

de Beauvoir, Simone.,1949. Le Deuxième Sexe

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