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Chapter 8
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
When Peter realizes Marian is running off, he is livid. Peter and Ainsley run to get the car, while Len starts chasing after Marian on foot. As Peter’s car approaches her, Marian worries that he might run her over. To get away, Marian climbs the wall of a private garden, hiding in the bushes. But Peter has “stalked” her there, and Marian gives in, fixing her clothes and getting into the car.
All of the language here—especially the word “stalked”—suggests that Peter is hunting Marian, much like he used to hunt various animals on his bachelor trips with Trigger and their other college friends.
Themes
They arrive at Len’s, where Len pours them all generous drinks. While Len and Peter discuss Len’s various cameras, Ainsley sits quietly, drinking a diet Coke and waiting passively (Marian thinks) for her prey to be “drowned and digested.” Meanwhile, Marian craves quiet, so she slides underneath Len’s bed, hiding beneath the bed slats in a dusty but comfortable spot. It takes a while before Peter realizes that Marian is missing, and Marian’s neck muscles are really starting to hurt. Finally, Peter realizes that Marian is trapped under the bed.
Earlier in the evening, Marian felt a strange sense of being drowned, ducking beneath the water of the bathtub; now, she crawls underneath the bed, similarly submerging himself in the depths. It thus seems that being a woman at this time involves either trying to symbolically “drown” others (as Ainsley does with Len) or to “drown” oneself.
Themes
Len and Peter help Marian get out, with Peter acting gallant as he lifts the dusty Marian from the floor. But Marian is having none of it; “my prevailing emotion,” she reflects, “was rage.” Hearing the anger in Marian’s voice, Peter protests that it is time for them to leave. While Len tries to get Ainsley to stay for another drink, Marian heads onto the street, insisting that she will walk home alone.
More and more, Marian seems to feel out of touch with (and disembodied from) her own feelings, as she is almost surprised by the rage that comes out of her mouth here.
Themes
Once outside, Marian feels better. Though she does not understand why she has acted this way, she feels that she has at least done something. After walking by herself for 10 minutes, Marian sees Peter’s car pull up next to her. It has started to rain, so Marian reluctantly gets in. Peter immediately starts pressing Marian on her behavior, wondering why she ruined the evening—why couldn’t she have behaved more like Ainsley? “You’re rejecting your femininity,” Peter warns.
Clearly, Marian spends much of her life catering to other people’s wishes (her bosses’, Peter’s, Ainsley’s, even her landlady’s). So for Marian to act of her own accord here, even if she does not fully understand it, marks a rare moment of agency. And it is exactly that agency that causes Peter to accuse Marian of “rejecting her femininity”—implying that “femininity” is defined, first and foremost, by giving up one’s agency.
Themes
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Annoyed, Marian responds that the issue was less her femininity and more Peter’s general rudeness. At that, Peter accelerates, swerving the car into somebody’s lawn so hard that it takes out a chunk of the grass. Terrified, Marian screams, “You’ll get us all killed!” Strangely, as she calms down, Marian realizes that she “must have been thinking of [herself] as plural.”
Marian’s sense of symbolic danger has now become much more literal, as Peter’s reckless driving imperils both of their lives. Marian’s sudden shift to “thinking of myself as plural” parallels her earlier dissociation at the bar, when she did not notice she was crying. Indeed, perhaps because she has spent so long prioritizing other people’s needs and desires, Marian now feels very little control or sense of her own self, an alienation first expressed through her lack of “I” pronouns.
Themes
Peter thinks the whole thing is funny, especially the fact that he destroyed someone’s lawn. Now in a good mood, Peter drives Marian back to her house, the rain pouring down. Peter and Marian press their foreheads together, and Marian takes in his eyes—first they seem almost “animal,” then they multiply, as if Peter has eight eyes at once. As a flash of lightning strikes, Peter asks Marian a surprising question: “how do you think we’d be, married?”
Peter’s cruel laughter here signals his entitled approach to the world, as if everything belongs to him (or should belong to him). The multiplying selves that Marian feels here, seeing both her own body and Peter’s as plural, then links to Peter’s strange marriage proposal. After all, a cynical view of betrothal might see it as the loss of oneself in favor of this multiplied, “married” unit.
Themes
