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
Peter leaves early, and Marian putters around the house, cleaning anything she can find to futz with. Finally, Marian decides it is a good day to do laundry. Normally she dreads the laundromat, which is a bus trip away. But today, Marian is eager to get out of the house. Marian makes herself a frozen dinner, piles the laundry (plus some lingerie Ainsley wants her to wash) into her laundry bag, and heads out, ignoring the lady down below’s cold stare.
Here and elsewhere, the narrative is committed to reminding its readers just how much repetitive labor is involved in the basics of staying alive—no matter how many efficient frozen meals or rice puddings companies can invent, there will still always be laundry to do and mouths to feed.
Themes
On the bus ride, Marian looks up at the advertisements, finding herself scandalized by an ad for girdles. Marian wonders why the images are so sexy—aren’t they supposed to be advertising to women, not men? But maybe, Marian reflects, these ads allow women a new “self-image,” as if “they were getting their own youth and slenderness” back in the girdle packages.
Earlier, Marian noticed that beer commercials allowed men to feel closer to their own virility by presenting stereotypically masculine images. Girdles do the same thing for women, enforcing feminine gender norms. But tellingly, both types of ads defer to the male gaze; men are trying to impress other men, Marian thinks, and women are trying to impress men.
Themes
Once Marian arrives at the laundromat, she realizes that she has forgotten her soap. The person at the machine next to Marian hands her his detergent. With a start, Marian realizes it is Duncan, the pale man from the interview. Duncan comments with interest on Ainsley’s lacy underwear, and Marian is quick to clarify that it is not hers. As Duncan slowly eats a chocolate bar, he reflects that he is always finding other people’s pubic hair in the machines.
In every way, Duncan now emerges as Peter’s opposite. While Peter is proper and clean, Duncan is messy, pulling chocolate from a pocket and commenting on all the dirty clothes Marian does her best to hide. And while Peter tries to sanitize sex, going so far as to have sex in a bathtub, Duncan seems at home with the reality of pubic hair and unclean underwear.
Themes
Duncan discusses his love of laundromats: he likes watching the machines go round and round, and he often turns to ironing to soothe his fingers when he has nothing else to do. Plus, Duncan needs an excuse to get out of his apartment—Trevor and Fish are always arguing about literature. “Words are beginning to lose their meaning,” Duncan sighs. In the gray-blue light of the laundromat, he looks almost translucent.
Duncan’s assertion that words no longer hold meaning echoes Marian’s experience of language, in which she suddenly finds herself thinking in the third person (or in plural) instead of in the first-person singular. Similarly, Duncan’s pale, almost see-through skin perhaps echoes Marian’s own sense of turning into “jelly.” But if neither words nor bodies hold weight, what can Marian cling to?
Themes
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Duncan explains that he and his roommates are all getting doctorates in English. Though Marian thinks this seems exciting, Duncan scoffs, commenting that everything interesting has already been written about. Duncan does not even know yet what his thesis will be on; right now, he’s several years behind on a term paper about pre-Raphaelite pornography. When Marian comments that Duncan should switch careers, Duncan murmurs that he should just quit smoking instead.
As an English Ph.D. student, Duncan would seem to have one of the few jobs that exists outside the consumer-driven working world. But Duncan’s comments here suggest that his work, much like Marian’s, feels more about repetition and routine than it does about actually creating anything new.
Themes
Duncan tells Marian more about his life. None of his roommates are from here; he is from a small town, and Trevor and Fish are from wealthy families in pretty cities, far away. Duncan also admits that last week, he got so bored that he tried to set fire to his apartment. Marian asks why Duncan doesn’t move out, and Duncan confesses that his roommates take good care of him. For a moment, Marian feels as if Duncan is “an uncooked egg deciding to come out its shell.”
Like Marian, Duncan is from a small town, far from Toronto—which perhaps helps explain how the two are able to bond so quickly. Again, Marian thinks of an “uncooked” (or undercooked) egg, suggesting some anxiety around the sustenance and fertility that eggs frequently symbolize in the novel (and beyond).
Themes
Duncan warns Marian that his grumpy, invalid persona can be tempting, as women love to feel that they are nursing men back to health. “But be careful,” Duncan says. “Hunger is more basic than love. Florence Nightingale was a cannibal, you know.” Marian suddenly feels accused and embarrassed, so she gets up to go. And then, almost without realizing it, Marian and Duncan are kissing, his body thin and dry.
Marian has very little hunger; she eats frozen meals because she feels she should or goes to a diner to get a break from work. But as Duncan points out, “hunger”—the need to consume not products but living things—is the most “basic” instinct of all. And while Marian does not seem to hunger for food, her kiss with Duncan suggests that she does have a real craving for something missing in her life.
Themes
