The Edible Woman

by

Margaret Atwood

Millie Character Analysis

Millie is Mrs. Bogue’s assistant and one of the “office virgins” at Marian’s work. Millie is athletic and Australian, and she seems less nervous than her friends Lucy and Emmy. However, like the other “office virgins,” Millie is shown to be deeply concerned with her appearance, as she is anxious to attract a potential husband.

Millie Quotes in The Edible Woman

The The Edible Woman quotes below are all either spoken by Millie or refer to Millie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gendered Expectations vs. Personal Identity Theme Icon
).
Chapter 19 Quotes

But now she could see the roll of fat pushed up across Mrs. Gundridge’s back by the top of her corset, the ham-like bulge of thigh […] and the others too, similar in structure but with varying proportions and textures of bumpy permanence and dune-like contours of breast and waist and hip; their fluidity sustained somewhere within by bones, without by a carapace of clothing and makeup. What peculiar creatures they were; in the continual flux between the outside and the inside, taking things in, giving them out, chewing, words, potato chips, burps, grease, hair, babies, milk, excrement, cookies, vomit, coffee, tomato juice, blood, tea, sweat, liquor, tears, and garbage…

[…] She was one of them, her body the same, identical, merged with that other flesh that choked the air in the flowered room with its sweet organic scent; she felt suffocated by this thick sargasso-sea of femininity.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Millie, Emmy, Mrs. Bogue, Mrs. Grot
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Edible Woman PDF

Millie Quotes in The Edible Woman

The The Edible Woman quotes below are all either spoken by Millie or refer to Millie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gendered Expectations vs. Personal Identity Theme Icon
).
Chapter 19 Quotes

But now she could see the roll of fat pushed up across Mrs. Gundridge’s back by the top of her corset, the ham-like bulge of thigh […] and the others too, similar in structure but with varying proportions and textures of bumpy permanence and dune-like contours of breast and waist and hip; their fluidity sustained somewhere within by bones, without by a carapace of clothing and makeup. What peculiar creatures they were; in the continual flux between the outside and the inside, taking things in, giving them out, chewing, words, potato chips, burps, grease, hair, babies, milk, excrement, cookies, vomit, coffee, tomato juice, blood, tea, sweat, liquor, tears, and garbage…

[…] She was one of them, her body the same, identical, merged with that other flesh that choked the air in the flowered room with its sweet organic scent; she felt suffocated by this thick sargasso-sea of femininity.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Millie, Emmy, Mrs. Bogue, Mrs. Grot
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis: