Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Edible Woman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gendered Expectations vs. Personal Identity
Consumerism and Consumption
Bodies, Pregnancy, and Food
Language, Meaning, and Alienation
Routine, Repetition, and Resistance
Summary
Analysis
“I knew I was all right on Friday,” Marian McAlpin reflects, beginning her story in first-person narration; “if anything I was feeling more stolid than usual.” Marian makes breakfast while her roommate Ainsley, having spent last night at a party for dental students, complains about the boring men and her painful hangover. Marian listens patiently, even when Ainsley makes a subtle dig at Peter, Marian’s boyfriend. By the time Ainsley’s dentist story is over, Marian realizes she is going to be late for work.
On the one hand, Marian’s first-person introduction to her story suggests her absolute sense of normalcy and “stolidity”; unlike her more freewheeling roommate Ainsley, Marian makes a morning routine and sticks to it. On the other hand, Marian’s comment that she was “all right on Friday” foreshadows that she will not stay all right—“stolid” and routine—as the weeks and months progress.
Themes
Marian and Ainsley live on the top floor of an old house in a nice neighborhood. Their landlady, whom Marian calls the lady down below, lives on the first floor with her daughter. The lady down below is frustratingly old fashioned; she keeps the halls decked out in trinkets, she tacitly forbids alcohol and men, and she is always fretting that Ainsley (“Miss Tewce”) is doing things that might corrupt her daughter. Still, even though the lady down below is always angry with Ainsley, she only ever complains about it to Marian.
Symbolically, the lady down below (never named) represents the traditional, more conservative model of femininity that college graduates like Ainsley and Marian seem to break with. The lady down below’s emphasis on propriety—no alcohol, no men—especially contrasts with Ainsley’s more promiscuous lifestyle. Marian is thus frustratingly caught in the middle, having to negotiate a balance between Ainsley’s carefree modernity and her landlady’s staunch, fussy tradition.
Themes
Marian just misses the bus. As she waits for the next one, Ainsley joins her at the bus stop, having done her hair and styled herself elaborately. Unlike Marian, who is from a small town, Ainsley has no patience for snooping, and she cannot stand the constant questions and insinuations from the lady down below. Marian is more sympathetic, especially since the two apartments share one entrance and one bathroom.
Even as Ainsley resists some of the more old-fashioned gender norms that the lady down below tries to enforce, Ainsley’s constant focus on her make-up and appearance demonstrates that Ainsley, too, plays into some traditional ideas of femininity. The fact that Marian is not from this city (likely Toronto, though it is never explicitly named) will later add to her sense of alienation.
Themes
The bus arrives, and Marian and Ainsley stop talking. Marian likes to look at the advertisements as she rides. Besides, she and Ainsley were never close friends—they were just in the same circles and in need of a roommate at a similar time. Despite their differences—Ainsley is a big drinker and a swirl of chaos, while Marian is neat and self-regulating—the two live well together, sharing costs and cleaning duties. Still, Marian sometimes envies her friend’s free-flowing lifestyle. Even Ainsley’s job, as an electric-toothbrush tester, seems somehow more exciting than Marian’s.
This story is set in the mid-1960s, when the phenomenon of college-educated women was still a relatively new one. The chaotic process by which Marian found a roommate speaks to the idea that both of these young women are walking an unfamiliar path, experiencing young adulthood differently than perhaps their own mothers did. It is also worth noting that Marian pays such careful attention to advertisements, finding it easier to stare at posters for products than to talk to her roommate. The subtle, insidious prevalence of consumerism will eventually become one of the novel’s major themes.
Themes
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