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Chapter 1
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
The summer heat is especially bad today, so Marian is crushed to see that the A/C is broken again. Just as Marian goes to sit at her typewriter, the dietician Mrs. Withers summons her as a taste-tester. Mrs. Withers lays out three different flavors of canned rice pudding. Since Marian works on questionnaires, Mrs. Withers thinks her opinion will be especially helpful—but Marian, put off by the artificial taste of food “for the time-saver market,” just wants to get back to her desk.
Everything about Marian’s office suggests artifice: the job involves creating advertisements that oversell products, the environment is stale and humid, and even the food (like the canned rice pudding) tastes like chemical preservatives. It is especially telling that Mrs. Withers links the artificial taste to efficiency (saying this product is “for the time-saver market”); the connection between food, time, and routine will become increasingly fraught for Marian as the narrative continues.
Themes
Marian was hired to edit Seymour Surveys’s advertising questionnaires, turning psychologists’ wording into something everyday consumers could understand. Four months ago, when Marian graduated, she felt lucky to have this job. Now, though, Marian fears that there is no room for advancement; all the top-level executives are men, and Marian’s work seems to be mostly about attending to unpaid housewives who respond—out of boredom or loneliness—to the surveys. All of Marian’s colleagues are women.
On the level of plot, it now becomes clear that Marian is a very recent college graduate, having only entered into the possibilities of the adult world. But in reality, Marian feels she has only two options: to stall professionally at a company like Seymour Surveys, where there is no real room for advancement, or to experience the boredom and loneliness of the housewives she interviews.
Themes
A while later, Marian’s work is again interrupted, this time by Mrs. Grot in accounting. Mrs. Grot is insisting that Marian pay into the company’s Pension Plan, even though Marian does not want to join. Marian feels a hint of panic at the idea that she might continue to work at Seymour Surveys forever, even though she assures herself that she can quit anytime she wants.
Just moments before, Marian was feeling overwhelmed by how stagnated her post-university life already felt. Now, Mrs. Grot’s eagerness to lock Marian into the pension program—meaning Marian would pay part of her salary into a retirement fund she would not be able to use for decades—cements Marian’s feeling of being trapped.
Themes
At 10:30, Marian usually goes for coffee with the three other young women in her office—elegant Lucy, athletic Millie, and sickly Emmy. Sometimes Ainsley joins them, though she looks down on the other girls, joking that they are the “office virgins.” Millie gossips about a laxative survey that has just been canceled, while Emmy picks at her nails.
Structurally, the narrative presents three types of young women. First, Ainsley is promiscuous but successful in her flirtations, seeing men as something to tease or control. Second, Marian appears to be in a stable relationship with Peter. And third, the so-called “office virgins” illustrate the anxieties associated with singledom (and the prejudices, as can be seen in Ainsley’s slightly cruel mockery).
Themes
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Ainsley arrives, and she is curt to the other girls. When Marian asks her about work, Ainsley tells a far-fetched story about a woman who tried to murder her husband with an electric toothbrush. Marian thinks Ainsley is lying, but Ainsley’s blue eyes look so round that the “office virgins” believe her. Lucy complains about the waitress (who is “blatantly not an office virgin”), and Millie assures Marian she’ll get used to the Pension Plan over time.
Ainsley’s desire to trick and confuse the other girls at the diner once more hints at the wildness she seems to treasure. By contrast, the “office virgins” are gullible and patient, quietly accepting the pension plan that feels so constricting to Marian. And Marian is still caught in the middle between Ainsley’s chaos and the cautious behavior of the other women in her life.
Themes
