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Chapter 22
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
Now, Marian’s stomach rejects even the canned rice pudding, as her brain imagines that the globules are in fact little cocoons, bursting with life. Marian does not want to bring up her issue to Peter, fearing that it might cause him to call off the wedding. One day, while lying in bed with Peter, Marian asks him if she is normal, which he takes as an opportunity to make some sexual innuendoes.
Even as Marian’s panicked aversion to food seems directly linked to her impending wedding to Peter, she still cannot imagine how to make her life feel meaningful—or at the very least “normal”—without that wedding on the horizon.
Themes
Marian then changes tactics, cutting herself a slice of the cake she got Peter for Valentine’s Day. Marian tries to eat it, but it is too spongy, making her feel as if thousands of lungs are bursting. Marian brings another slice to Peter, as a test—“if he couldn’t eat his either then she was normal.” Unfortunately, Peter devours the whole thing.
The violence that Marian initially only associated with dead meat is now everywhere, as she imagines that sponge cake and rice pudding are alive, each globule or crumb a symbolic lung or other organ. But whereas earlier, Marian was able to dismiss Peter’s approach to food as horrific and undesirable (like when he cut into his steak with force), she now sees Peter as the standard of “normalcy” that she must meet to survive.
Themes
