The Edible Woman

by

Margaret Atwood

Peter Wollander Character Analysis

Peter Wollander is Marian’s boyfriend and eventual fiancé. Peter is a lawyer, and he is widely respected for his conventional good looks and responsible lifestyle. Ainsley often lightly mocks Peter for surrounding himself with “soap men,” or boring married men with boring jobs, though Peter’s stability is an object of envy for many of Marian’s coworkers. As Marian’s wedding to Peter approaches, however, she begins to see her future husband with increasing paranoia, believing that Peter—an impassioned hunter in his bachelor days—might be hunting her (or that he might be moonlighting as the sinister Underwear Man who prank calls housewives). As Marian dissociates, ceasing to eat and growing afraid of everyday objects like eggs and cameras, Peter appears as an increasingly menacing figure, one Marian can only escape through her secretive affair with Duncan. By the end of the narrative, Marian has ended things with Peter, presenting him with the woman-shaped cake she has baked and accusing Peter of trying to destroy” and “assimilate” her. In other words, Marian states outright Peter’s essential symbolic place in the novel—in trying to “assimilate” Marian to the patriarchal gender norms of mid-century life, Peter also demonstrates just how “destructive” those norms can be.

Peter Wollander Quotes in The Edible Woman

The The Edible Woman quotes below are all either spoken by Peter Wollander or refer to Peter Wollander. 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 5 Quotes

[Ainsley] gave me a disgusted look. “Every woman should have at least one baby.” She sounded like a voice on the radio saying that every woman should have at least one electric hair dryer. “It's even more important than sex. It fulfills your deepest femininity.” Ainsley is fond of paperback books by anthropologists about primitive cultures: there are several of them bogged down among the clothes on her floor. At her college they make you take courses in it.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Ainsley Tewce (speaker), Peter Wollander
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Maybe he had intended the bathtub as an expression of his personality. I tried thinking of ways to make that fit. Asceticism? A modern version of hair shirts or sitting on spikes? […] Or maybe it had been a reckless young-man gesture, like jumping into the swimming pool with your clothes on, or putting things on your head at parties. But this image didn't suit Peter either. I was glad there were no more of his group of old friends left to be married: next time he might have tried cramming us into a clothes closet, or an exotic posture in the kitchen sink.

Or maybe—and the thought was chilling—he had intended it as an expression of my personality. A new corridor of possibilities extended itself before me: did he really think of me as a lavatory fixture? What kind of a girl did he think I was?

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander, Trigger
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“One shot, right through the heart. The rest of them got away. I picked it up and Trigger said, ‘You know how to gut them, you just slit her down the belly and give her a good hard shake and all the guts’ll fall out.’ So I whipped out my knife, good knife, German steel, and slit the belly and took her by the hind legs […] God it was funny. Lucky thing Trigger and me had the old cameras along, we got some good shots of the whole mess.”

After a while I noticed with mild curiosity that a large drop of something wet had materialized on the table near my hand. I poked it with my finger and smudged it around a little before I realized with horror that it was a tear. I must be crying then!

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander (speaker), Leonard Slank, Trigger
Related Symbols: Cameras
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“Ainsley behaved herself properly, why couldn't you? The trouble with you is,” he said savagely, “you're just rejecting your femininity.” […]

He glanced quickly over at me, his eyes narrowed as though he was taking aim. Then he gritted his teeth together and stepped murderously hard on the accelerator. […] At the suddenly increased speed the car skidded, turned two-and-a-quarter times round, slithered backward down over someone’s inclined lawn, and came to a bone-jolting stop. I heard something snap.

“You maniac!” I wailed when I had ricocheted off the glove compartment and realized I wasn't dead. “You'll get us all killed!” I must have been thinking of myself as plural.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander (speaker), Ainsley Tewce , Leonard Slank
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

She could feel time eddying and curling almost visibly around her feet, rising around her, lifting her body in the office chair and bearing her, slowly and circuitously but with the inevitability of water moving downhill, towards the distant, not-so-distant-any-more day they had agreed on—in late March?—that would end this phase and begin another. Somewhere else, arrangements were being gradually made; the relatives were beginning to organize their forces and energies; it was all being taken care of, there was nothing for her to do. […] Now there was this day to get through: a landmark to be passed on the shore, a tree not much different from any of the others that could be distinguished from the rest only by being here rather than further back or further on, with no other purpose than to measure the distance traveled.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander
Page Number: 122
Explanation and Analysis:

She saw [the Underwear Man] as wearing a business suit and a fairly conservative tie, diagonal stripes in brown and maroon; shoes well-shined. Perhaps his otherwise normal mind had been crazed into frenzy by the girdle advertisements on the buses: he was a victim of society.

[…] As she stepped into the street a new thought came to her. Maybe it was really Peter. Slipping out from his law office into the nearest phone booth to dial the number of housewives in Etobicoke. […] Perhaps this was his true self, the core of his personality, the central Peter who had been occupying her mind more and more lately. Perhaps this was what lay hidden under the surface, under the other surfaces, that secret identity which in spite of her many guesses and attempts and half-successes she was aware she had still not uncovered: he was really the Underwear Man.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander, The Underwear Man
Page Number: 124
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

She watched the capable hands holding the knife and fork, slicing precisely with an exact adjustment of pressures. How skillfully he did it: no tearing, no ragged edges. And yet it was a violent action, cutting; and violence in connection with Peter seemed incongruous to her. Like the Moose Beer commercials, which had begun to appear everywhere […] The fisherman wading in the street, scooping the trout into his net was too tidy: he looked as though his hair had just been combed, a few strands glued neatly to his forehead to show he was wind-blown. And the fish also was unreal; it had no slime, no teeth, no smell; it was a clever toy, metal and enamel.

[…] She looked down at her half-eaten steak and suddenly saw it as a hunk of muscle. Blood-red. Part of a real cow that once moved and ate and was killed.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander, The Underwear Man, Trigger
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

Of course Duncan was making what they called “demands,” if only on her time and attention; but at least he wasn’t threatening her with some intangible gift in return. His complete self-centeredness was reassuring in a peculiar way. Thus, when he would murmur, with his lips touching her cheek, “You know, I don’t even like you very much,” it didn’t disturb her at all because she didn’t have to answer. But when Peter, with his mouth in approximately the same position, would whisper “I love you” and wait for the echo, she had to exert herself.

Related Characters: Duncan/The Pale Man (speaker), Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander
Page Number: 200
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

When at last all the clamps and rollers and pins were in place, and her head resembled a mutant hedgehog with a covering of rounded hairy appendages instead of spikes, she was led away and installed under a dryer and switched on. She looked sideways down the assembly-line of women seated in identical mauve chairs under identical whirring mushroom-shaped machines. All that was visible was a row of strange creatures with legs of various shapes and hands that held magazines and heads that were metal domes. Inert; totally inert. Was this what she was being pushed towards, this compound of the simply vegetable and the simply mechanical? An electric mushroom.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander
Page Number: 230
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

“I worry about her a lot, you know,” Joe continued. “I think it's a lot harder for her than for most other women; I think it's harder for any woman who's been to university. She gets the idea she has a mind, her professors pay attention to what she has to say, they treat her like a thinking human being; when she gets married, her core gets invaded…”

“Her what?” Marian asked.

“Her core. At the center of her personality, the thing she's built up; her image of herself, if you like.”

“Oh. Yes,” said Marian.

“Her feminine role and her core are really in opposition, her feminine role demands passivity from her…”

Marian had a fleeting vision of a large globular pastry, decorated with whipped cream and maraschino cherries, floating suspended in the air above Joe's head.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Joe Bates (speaker), Peter Wollander, Clara Bates
Related Symbols: The Woman-Shaped Cake
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis:

“Was that one of me?” she asked. She smiled at [Peter] in conciliation. She sensed her face as vastly spreading and papery and slightly dilapidated: a huge billboard smile, peeling away in flaps and patches, the metal surface beneath showing through […]

In the living room Peter was calling above the noise “Come on now, let's get a group portrait. Everybody altogether.” She had to hurry. Now there was the living room to negotiate. She would have to become less visible.

[…] She could not let him capture her this time. Once he pulled the trigger she would be stopped, fixed indissolubly in that gesture, that single stance, unable to move or change.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander (speaker)
Related Symbols: Cameras
Page Number: 268
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

“You look delicious,” she told [the cake]. “Very appetizing. And that’s what will happen to you; that’s what you get for being food.” […]

She went into the kitchen and returned, bearing the platter in front of her, carefully and with reverence, as though she was carrying something sacred in a procession, an icon or the crown on a cushion in a play. She knelt, setting the platter on the coffee table in front of Peter.

“You've been trying to destroy me, haven't you,” she said. “You've been trying to assimilate me. But I've made you a substitute, something you'll like much better. This is what you really wanted all along, isn't it? I'll get you a fork.”

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander
Related Symbols: The Woman-Shaped Cake, Eggs
Page Number: 299
Explanation and Analysis:

“Marian, what have you got there?” [Ainsley] walked over to see. “It's a woman—a woman made of cake!” She gave Marian a strange look.

Marian chewed and swallowed. “Have some,” she said, “it's really good. I made it this afternoon.”

Ainsley's mouth opened and closed, fishlike, as though she was trying to take down the full implication of what she saw. “Marian!” she exclaimed at last, with horror. “You're rejecting your femininity!”

[…] Marian looked back at her platter. The woman laid there, still smiling glassily, her legs gone. “Nonsense,” she said. “It's only a cake.” She plunged her fork into the carcass, neatly severing the body from the head.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Ainsley Tewce (speaker), Peter Wollander, Fischer Smythe (Fish)
Related Symbols: The Woman-Shaped Cake
Page Number: 301
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

“Maybe Peter was trying to destroy me, or maybe I was trying to destroy him, or we were both trying to destroy each other, how's that? What does it matter, you're back to so-called reality, you're a consumer.”

“Incidentally,” I said, remembering, “would you like some cake?” I had half the torso and the head left over.

[…] It gave me a peculiar sense of satisfaction to see [Duncan] eat as if the work hadn't been wasted after all—although the cake was absorbed without exclamations of pleasure, even without noticeable expression. I smiled comfortably at him.

[…] He scraped the last chocolate curl up with his fork and pushed away the plate. “Thank you,” he said, licking his lips. “It was delicious.”

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Duncan/The Pale Man (speaker), Peter Wollander
Related Symbols: The Woman-Shaped Cake
Page Number: 309
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Edible Woman LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Edible Woman PDF

Peter Wollander Quotes in The Edible Woman

The The Edible Woman quotes below are all either spoken by Peter Wollander or refer to Peter Wollander. 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 5 Quotes

[Ainsley] gave me a disgusted look. “Every woman should have at least one baby.” She sounded like a voice on the radio saying that every woman should have at least one electric hair dryer. “It's even more important than sex. It fulfills your deepest femininity.” Ainsley is fond of paperback books by anthropologists about primitive cultures: there are several of them bogged down among the clothes on her floor. At her college they make you take courses in it.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Ainsley Tewce (speaker), Peter Wollander
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Maybe he had intended the bathtub as an expression of his personality. I tried thinking of ways to make that fit. Asceticism? A modern version of hair shirts or sitting on spikes? […] Or maybe it had been a reckless young-man gesture, like jumping into the swimming pool with your clothes on, or putting things on your head at parties. But this image didn't suit Peter either. I was glad there were no more of his group of old friends left to be married: next time he might have tried cramming us into a clothes closet, or an exotic posture in the kitchen sink.

Or maybe—and the thought was chilling—he had intended it as an expression of my personality. A new corridor of possibilities extended itself before me: did he really think of me as a lavatory fixture? What kind of a girl did he think I was?

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander, Trigger
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“One shot, right through the heart. The rest of them got away. I picked it up and Trigger said, ‘You know how to gut them, you just slit her down the belly and give her a good hard shake and all the guts’ll fall out.’ So I whipped out my knife, good knife, German steel, and slit the belly and took her by the hind legs […] God it was funny. Lucky thing Trigger and me had the old cameras along, we got some good shots of the whole mess.”

After a while I noticed with mild curiosity that a large drop of something wet had materialized on the table near my hand. I poked it with my finger and smudged it around a little before I realized with horror that it was a tear. I must be crying then!

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander (speaker), Leonard Slank, Trigger
Related Symbols: Cameras
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“Ainsley behaved herself properly, why couldn't you? The trouble with you is,” he said savagely, “you're just rejecting your femininity.” […]

He glanced quickly over at me, his eyes narrowed as though he was taking aim. Then he gritted his teeth together and stepped murderously hard on the accelerator. […] At the suddenly increased speed the car skidded, turned two-and-a-quarter times round, slithered backward down over someone’s inclined lawn, and came to a bone-jolting stop. I heard something snap.

“You maniac!” I wailed when I had ricocheted off the glove compartment and realized I wasn't dead. “You'll get us all killed!” I must have been thinking of myself as plural.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander (speaker), Ainsley Tewce , Leonard Slank
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

She could feel time eddying and curling almost visibly around her feet, rising around her, lifting her body in the office chair and bearing her, slowly and circuitously but with the inevitability of water moving downhill, towards the distant, not-so-distant-any-more day they had agreed on—in late March?—that would end this phase and begin another. Somewhere else, arrangements were being gradually made; the relatives were beginning to organize their forces and energies; it was all being taken care of, there was nothing for her to do. […] Now there was this day to get through: a landmark to be passed on the shore, a tree not much different from any of the others that could be distinguished from the rest only by being here rather than further back or further on, with no other purpose than to measure the distance traveled.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander
Page Number: 122
Explanation and Analysis:

She saw [the Underwear Man] as wearing a business suit and a fairly conservative tie, diagonal stripes in brown and maroon; shoes well-shined. Perhaps his otherwise normal mind had been crazed into frenzy by the girdle advertisements on the buses: he was a victim of society.

[…] As she stepped into the street a new thought came to her. Maybe it was really Peter. Slipping out from his law office into the nearest phone booth to dial the number of housewives in Etobicoke. […] Perhaps this was his true self, the core of his personality, the central Peter who had been occupying her mind more and more lately. Perhaps this was what lay hidden under the surface, under the other surfaces, that secret identity which in spite of her many guesses and attempts and half-successes she was aware she had still not uncovered: he was really the Underwear Man.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander, The Underwear Man
Page Number: 124
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

She watched the capable hands holding the knife and fork, slicing precisely with an exact adjustment of pressures. How skillfully he did it: no tearing, no ragged edges. And yet it was a violent action, cutting; and violence in connection with Peter seemed incongruous to her. Like the Moose Beer commercials, which had begun to appear everywhere […] The fisherman wading in the street, scooping the trout into his net was too tidy: he looked as though his hair had just been combed, a few strands glued neatly to his forehead to show he was wind-blown. And the fish also was unreal; it had no slime, no teeth, no smell; it was a clever toy, metal and enamel.

[…] She looked down at her half-eaten steak and suddenly saw it as a hunk of muscle. Blood-red. Part of a real cow that once moved and ate and was killed.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander, The Underwear Man, Trigger
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

Of course Duncan was making what they called “demands,” if only on her time and attention; but at least he wasn’t threatening her with some intangible gift in return. His complete self-centeredness was reassuring in a peculiar way. Thus, when he would murmur, with his lips touching her cheek, “You know, I don’t even like you very much,” it didn’t disturb her at all because she didn’t have to answer. But when Peter, with his mouth in approximately the same position, would whisper “I love you” and wait for the echo, she had to exert herself.

Related Characters: Duncan/The Pale Man (speaker), Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander
Page Number: 200
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

When at last all the clamps and rollers and pins were in place, and her head resembled a mutant hedgehog with a covering of rounded hairy appendages instead of spikes, she was led away and installed under a dryer and switched on. She looked sideways down the assembly-line of women seated in identical mauve chairs under identical whirring mushroom-shaped machines. All that was visible was a row of strange creatures with legs of various shapes and hands that held magazines and heads that were metal domes. Inert; totally inert. Was this what she was being pushed towards, this compound of the simply vegetable and the simply mechanical? An electric mushroom.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin, Peter Wollander
Page Number: 230
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

“I worry about her a lot, you know,” Joe continued. “I think it's a lot harder for her than for most other women; I think it's harder for any woman who's been to university. She gets the idea she has a mind, her professors pay attention to what she has to say, they treat her like a thinking human being; when she gets married, her core gets invaded…”

“Her what?” Marian asked.

“Her core. At the center of her personality, the thing she's built up; her image of herself, if you like.”

“Oh. Yes,” said Marian.

“Her feminine role and her core are really in opposition, her feminine role demands passivity from her…”

Marian had a fleeting vision of a large globular pastry, decorated with whipped cream and maraschino cherries, floating suspended in the air above Joe's head.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Joe Bates (speaker), Peter Wollander, Clara Bates
Related Symbols: The Woman-Shaped Cake
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis:

“Was that one of me?” she asked. She smiled at [Peter] in conciliation. She sensed her face as vastly spreading and papery and slightly dilapidated: a huge billboard smile, peeling away in flaps and patches, the metal surface beneath showing through […]

In the living room Peter was calling above the noise “Come on now, let's get a group portrait. Everybody altogether.” She had to hurry. Now there was the living room to negotiate. She would have to become less visible.

[…] She could not let him capture her this time. Once he pulled the trigger she would be stopped, fixed indissolubly in that gesture, that single stance, unable to move or change.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander (speaker)
Related Symbols: Cameras
Page Number: 268
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

“You look delicious,” she told [the cake]. “Very appetizing. And that’s what will happen to you; that’s what you get for being food.” […]

She went into the kitchen and returned, bearing the platter in front of her, carefully and with reverence, as though she was carrying something sacred in a procession, an icon or the crown on a cushion in a play. She knelt, setting the platter on the coffee table in front of Peter.

“You've been trying to destroy me, haven't you,” she said. “You've been trying to assimilate me. But I've made you a substitute, something you'll like much better. This is what you really wanted all along, isn't it? I'll get you a fork.”

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Peter Wollander
Related Symbols: The Woman-Shaped Cake, Eggs
Page Number: 299
Explanation and Analysis:

“Marian, what have you got there?” [Ainsley] walked over to see. “It's a woman—a woman made of cake!” She gave Marian a strange look.

Marian chewed and swallowed. “Have some,” she said, “it's really good. I made it this afternoon.”

Ainsley's mouth opened and closed, fishlike, as though she was trying to take down the full implication of what she saw. “Marian!” she exclaimed at last, with horror. “You're rejecting your femininity!”

[…] Marian looked back at her platter. The woman laid there, still smiling glassily, her legs gone. “Nonsense,” she said. “It's only a cake.” She plunged her fork into the carcass, neatly severing the body from the head.

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Ainsley Tewce (speaker), Peter Wollander, Fischer Smythe (Fish)
Related Symbols: The Woman-Shaped Cake
Page Number: 301
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

“Maybe Peter was trying to destroy me, or maybe I was trying to destroy him, or we were both trying to destroy each other, how's that? What does it matter, you're back to so-called reality, you're a consumer.”

“Incidentally,” I said, remembering, “would you like some cake?” I had half the torso and the head left over.

[…] It gave me a peculiar sense of satisfaction to see [Duncan] eat as if the work hadn't been wasted after all—although the cake was absorbed without exclamations of pleasure, even without noticeable expression. I smiled comfortably at him.

[…] He scraped the last chocolate curl up with his fork and pushed away the plate. “Thank you,” he said, licking his lips. “It was delicious.”

Related Characters: Marian McAlpin (speaker), Duncan/The Pale Man (speaker), Peter Wollander
Related Symbols: The Woman-Shaped Cake
Page Number: 309
Explanation and Analysis: