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Chapter 21
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
Before going into Duncan’s apartment, Marian debates whether she should keep her engagement ring on, ultimately deciding to put it in her purse for the evening. As soon as Marian enters, it is clear Trevor is cooking up a storm, setting out fancy glassware and a bottle of sherry. To be polite, Marian asks Fish about his work on Beatrix Potter—and Fish launches into a lengthy monologue about his new research. Fish is now looking into prenatal imagery in Alice in Wonderland, investigating Alice’s “phallic identity” when she “becomes a serpent, hostile to eggs.”
Most of the time, Duncan feels like an escape from the routinized, gendered life Marian usually experiences (a fact underlined when she sneaks her ring into her purse). But as Marian enters Duncan’s apartment, she is merely greeted by the same patterns: there is still the ridiculous fanciness of Trevor’s cooking to contend with, still Fish’s assertion of gender norms (in which he demonizes the fictional Alice for being hostile to “eggs” and the childbirth they represent).
Themes
Trevor interrupts, cattily dismissing Fish’s theories as outdated. Besides, dinner is served: the first course is shrimp cocktail, laid out with a variety of beautiful dishes and napkins that Marian gathers must come from Trevor’s family. As they eat, Trevor and Fish talk simultaneously, Trevor about the various spices and condiments he has purchased, and Fish about his thesis.
In this funny, absurdist scene, the novel makes high-minded intellectualism and domesticity equally meaningless; because Trevor and Fish speak (with great emphasis) at the same time, Marian cannot actually hear or care about anything either of them is saying.
Themes
Trevor clears the plates and then brings soup; Fish continues his argument, his mouth full. Fish is talking about overpopulation, which he sees as one cause of a widespread “anti-birth” philosophy (manifested by things like birth control). By the end of his speech, Fish is advocating for a world-destroying “cataclysm,” which he sees as the only path to true rebirth.
Again, even in this supposedly more radical space—where the confines of the family have been given up for the freedoms of the university—Fish’s restrictive, patriarchal emphasis on birth trumps all other modes of thought.
Themes
Meanwhile, Marian is desperate to avoid eating the meat on her plate without offending Trevor. So every time Trevor leaves to attend to more dinner party tasks, Marian chucks a small chunk of meat towards Duncan, who cleverly hides it on his plate. Unfortunately, Fish concludes his monologue by standing up, throwing the boys’ makeshift table into disarray and revealing Marian’s scheme to Trevor. Calmly, Duncan announces that he wants to be “an amoeba.”
Marian’s meat-throwing is one form of goofy rebellion against these parties and fancy dinners; Duncan’s desire to be an amoeba is another form. Many species of amoeba—unicellular, invisible organisms—only eat dead things, removing themselves from the living world in the way both Duncan and Marian seem so eager to.
Themes
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Duncan walks Marian part of the way home. Again, he brings up the idea of sleeping together, arguing that this is the only way he can prove to himself that Marian is real beneath all her layers of coats and scarves. The two of them discuss possible places for their tryst, finally settling on a cheap motel where Marian could pretend to be a sex worker. Marian walks the rest of the distance by herself, retrieving her engagement ring from among the spare change in her purse.
Marian began the narrative feeling “stolid”; now, she is so transparent and dissociated from her own body that even a potential lover like Duncan questions whether she is “real.” The juxtaposition of the cheap motel and Marian’s engagement ring, nestled among her spare change, shows that marriage and sex, too, can become commodities in such a consumerist society.
Themes
