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 first people to arrive are the “office virgins,” each one seemingly annoyed that Marian has invited the other two. Then Peter’s friends (“the soap men”) show up with their wives. Each new woman who walks in makes the “office virgins” even more dour, though Marian fears Lucy and Millie and Emmy will not be any happier when they see Trevor and Fish, the party’s only bachelors. Then Clara and Joe arrive, with Len in tow. Marian’s anxiety worsens—Ainsley will get here soon, and Len is sure to cause a scene.
Despite Marian’s sense of dread, the party starts out fairly normal, as everyone plays into their customary routines: the soap men chatter with their wives, while the “office virgins” scan the crowd (nervous as ever) for their future husbands.
Themes
While the “office virgins” corner Len, doing their best to seduce him, Joe draws Marian aside. He is worried about Clara, he confesses; he thinks life as a housewife is always more difficult for women who have gone to college. “Her feminine role and her core are really in opposition,” Joe reflects, which makes Marian picture “a large globular pastry, decorated with whipped cream and maraschino cherries.”
Like the decadent treats at her office Christmas party, Marian increasingly associates the kind of artificial desserts popular in mid-20th-century life with a repressive, commodified view of femininity (as if women are canned “whipped cream” or “maraschino cherries”). Even as Joe has a more feminist, nuanced view of marriage than most of the men in the novel, his well-meaning comment here nevertheless still reiterates the idea that a “feminine role” is inherently a domestic one, removed from the university life Clara craves.
Themes
Marian feels overcome by a strange affection for Joe. Not knowing how to express her tender feelings for him, she shoves some olives at him. Then Ainsley arrives and Marian, panicked, hustles Ainsley into Peter’s bedroom to warn her that Len is here. Ainsley seems calm, promising not to talk to him. As the party gets louder—the soap men are telling dirty jokes—Ainsley and Marian return to the living room. Marian gets a drink, and the men crowd around Ainsley, stunned, while their wives look on jealously.
Though Marian intuits—and despises—this party’s conflation of consumable snacks with meaningful connection, she still uses a plate of olives as a substitute for the more complex, vital tenderness she wants to express to Joe. The soap men’s dirty jokes and lecherous looks at Ainsley suggests that despite their clean (“soapy”) exteriors, the soap men are still almost predatory in their sexual desires.
Themes
The events of the party begin to blur. Marian notices all the discarded odds and ends in the sink, partially empty beer bottles and chewed olive pits gathering. Across the room, Lucy is flirting with Peter, batting her silver-painted eyelashes while Peter excitedly shows her his camera. Marian also sees that Len has noticed Ainsley, and Ainsley’s sudden serenity strikes Marian as a sign of danger. And to make matters worse, Trevor, Duncan, and Fish have all arrived. When Marian enters the door, Trevor does not even recognize her in her new red dress.
In this pivotal moment, several of the narrative’s core symbols and themes converge, terrifying Marian as they blur. The discarded beer bottles and olive pits recall the Moose Beer commercial (“production”), though this refuse now signals the dirty waste of “consumption.” Worse still, the “glittering” silver of Lucy’s eyeshadow and the bright flash of Peter’s camera reflect the animal, hunter-like instincts Marian has earlier spotted in these supposedly standard routines of courtship.
Themes
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Duncan is horrified by Marian’s new look, the first person she has encountered who has not rushed to compliment her on the dress and hair. Duncan wants to leave, fearing that either he or Peter will “evaporate” if they are to meet each other. Inside, Marian hears Peter taking pictures with his camera, crowing that he caught one of his friends “in the act!” Duncan takes off, smiling at Marian as he tells her that he is headed to the laundromat. Before Duncan goes, he tells Marian to “have a nice marriage.”
While Peter is chasing his guests at the party, trying to “catch” them, Duncan runs away, wanting no part of this frozen party. Instead, Duncan prefers to be at the laundromat—perhaps his way of reminding himself, as he looks at his own dirtied clothes, that he has a body of his own, too real and changeable to “evaporate.”
Themes
Marian doesn’t want to go back to the party, but she feels that she “has to,” so she heads inside. In a desperate move, Ainsley announces to the entire party that she and Len are going to have a baby—and Len responds by pouring his beer on Ainsley’s head. About to cry, Ainsley heads to the bathroom; Fish (whom Marian now calls “Fischer Smythe”) follows Ainsley, eager to take care of her. In the corner of Marian’s eye, she sees Fish pat Ainsley’s pregnant belly, his face filled with symbolic importance.
If Marian earlier felt control by inviting Duncan, his exit now exacerbates her sense that she has no agency at all over this party (despite ostensibly being one of the hosts). As was evident in that dinner party scene, Fish is obsessed with birth and child-rearing, albeit perhaps more as a “symbolic” event than a literal, bodily process. And tellingly, as Fish steps in to try and fulfill Ainsley’s hunger for a father-figure, he begins to be known as “Fischer Smythe”—shedding his nickname and coming into the first-and-last-name propriety of Peter and the rest of the “soap men.”
Themes
Somehow, despite Len’s outburst, the party continues. It gets late, and Marian is searching for another glass—she wants a drink (her way of “coping”), but there is no more clean glassware. Peter is still walking around with his camera in tow, and Marian wonders who the “real Peter” is. Will he be like one of those friendly dads in home movies? But then Marian has a flash of Peter mowing the lawn, a meat cleaver in one hand. The image terrifies her, and she runs out.
Marian has earlier seen Peter as a potentially violent figure, but now she more explicitly sees that violence as something her society normalizes: is there really any difference between the predatory hunter Peter was, the determined photographer he is now, and the father and husband he might soon become?
Themes
The real Peter is there again, pointing his camera at Marian for a flash picture. Marian screams, not wanting to be photographed; she pictures her face spreading out like one of the faces on those dilapidated billboards. Peter advises her not to drink anymore. Marian runs into the bedroom, determined to find Duncan and get out of here. For the first time, Marian realizes that Peter’s bedroom will look like this forever.
Because cameras have consistently (in the novel) been associated with hunting rifles, it is no surprise that Marian sees being photographed as a very literal death. And just as Marian dreads being frozen in a picture on Peter’s camera, she also detests the idea that his apartment—sparkling and impersonal and filled with stuff for stuff’s sake—might remain this way for all time.
Themes
Marian runs out in the snow, barely pausing to put her boots and coat on. She feels she will be safe as long as she can get to the laundromat. As she runs, Marian cannot help but fear that Peter is behind her, “tracing, following, stalking,” just like he had done to his guests. “That dark intent marksman with the hidden eye had been there all the time,” thinks Marian, “a homicidal maniac with a lethal weapon in his hands.”
At last, Marian herself explicitly connects Peter’s photography and his hunting habits, taking advantage of the shared vocabulary that unites the two pastimes (words like “trigger” and “following” and “marksman”). And as Marian embraces this idea of Peter as a hunter, she also finally unites all of her visions of him—civilized photographer Peter is no different than the sinister Underwear Man Marian has suspected him of being all along.
Themes
