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Cameras
For Marian, cameras come to symbolize how Peter—and more broadly, marriage as an institution—are trying to trap and possess her. Peter is fascinated by cameras, having discovered in photography a more peaceful hobby…
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Eggs
Throughout The Edible Woman, eggs represent various characters’ anxieties about childbirth. When the narrative begins, Marian makes herself a soft-boiled egg every morning, symbolically suggesting in this ritualized repetition that child-bearing is a similarly…
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The Woman-Shaped Cake
When Marian bakes and decorates the woman-shaped cake (the novel’s titular “edible woman”), it represents her choice to prioritize her own individual desires above the gendered expectations her society has placed on her. Marian decides…
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