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
Marian heads home to take a bath before seeing Peter and Len. Almost as soon as Marian gets in the tub, she hears the lady down below at the door, signaling that her bath time must come to an end. On her way to Peter’s, Marian picks up some frozen food, just in case Peter is too hungover to go out to dinner.
Every part of Marian’s life seems hemmed in by efficiency (frozen food, short bath times) and other people’s desires (the lady down below’s need to use the tub, Peter’s hunger or his lack thereof).
Themes
Peter lives in a new building—so new, in fact, that it is still under construction. Often, the workers out front do not believe Marian is allowed in, not having heard of the “Mr. Wollander” who lives on the seventh floor. Fortunately, Peter’s apartment itself is totally finished, with solid wood floors and electricity. Peter has done it up sparely, with Danish modern furniture; he also prominently displays his stash of hunting rifles and cameras, his most prized possessions.
Before ever meeting Peter, readers are introduced to his apartment—new, spotless, and almost entirely devoid of human life. Symbolically, this introduction foreshadows the surprising menace that Peter will eventually come to pose. Even more importantly, Peter’s fascination with cameras and hunting suggests that this is a man who loves to trap life and freeze it, whether with guns or flash bulbs.
Themes
When Marian enters, Peter calls to her from the bathroom, asking her to fix them both drinks. Then he emerges and summons Marian into the bathroom with him. This has become a routine—every time one of Peter’s college friends gets married, he insists that Marian have sex with him in some weird place, in the woods or on the sheepskin rug. As Marian snuggles with Peter in the tub, she notes that he always smells like soap. For a second, Marian imagines them both drowning, the bathtub turning into a coffin.
Even Marian’s intimate life is governed by routine and gendered expectations. It is telling that Peter is often associated with soap: soap is clean and appealing, but it also erases many of the tell-tale signs of human vigor. Indeed, as Marian climbs into the bathtub with Peter, she subconsciously conflates Peter’s soap-like smell with drowning and death.
Themes
Peter and Marian met at a garden party soon after her graduation. Marian liked Peter’s conventional good looks, and Peter liked that Marian was sensible and wouldn’t “try to take over his life” like so many other girls did. The only bump in their relationship was the first time Marian came over to Peter’s apartment, when their intimacy was interrupted by a shattered glass—and Peter, destroying the moment, had stopped everything to clean it up.
Marian’s description of her courtship with Peter sounds quite transactional; rather than intimacy or chemistry, both seem guided by a sense of propriety. Though Marian is also cautious, often focusing on small housekeeping details over emotional experience, she seems to resent this quality in Peter.
Themes
Get the entire The Edible Woman LitChart as a printable PDF.
Peter asks Marian how the sex was, and she replies that it was “marvelous”—though what else could she really say? Marian wonders whether the choice to have sex in a bathtub reflects some larger truth about how Peter sees her. When Peter playfully bites Marian on the shoulder, she turns on the cold water and ducks.
Even sex, ostensibly the most passionate, impulsive part of life, feels tidied up and routinized with Peter. Marian’s choice to duck under the water here parallels her earlier feeling of turning into jelly, as if she is almost predestined to disappear.
Themes
