If I start a new author and I suspect I'm really going to like them, like REALLY planning to dig all the way into their bibliography, I tend to go out of my way to begin with the debut, rather than, say, with their "best" work. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it's interesting to me to see where an author, particularly an author that has grown in power and conceptual reach over decades, started their journey. The first thing that they not only finished, but also sent off, got accepted, and sent out into the world. Sometimes, the author is brilliant right from word one (The Bluest Eye; Housekeeping; Go Tell It On the Mountain), but more often than not, you get to see the sourdough starter, the undigestible core of their first efforts that will become a delicious thing once it rises, deepens, and expands. I'm thinking here of A Confederate General from Big Sur, Americana, Norwood, and this, the debut novel by Margaret Atwood. Each has at least one big thing to recommend it, and should certainly not be ignored, but also point toward more daring achievements to come. I like give a first novel a lot of leeway, and I always use it as a inspiration in my own efforts; good, bad, flawed but interesting, you have to finish the first to get to the second, and so on. (sidebar: now that Haruki Murakami's first two novels are finally being published in English, I feel like I can finally geek out on his books. I know, it's stupid to have waited for that moment, but I really did. Murakami...unlocked.)The Edible Woman was published in 1969, and feels like it in all the best ways. Atwood pokes and prods every corner of modern life -- office culture, job security, entrenched academia, single ladies living on their own for the first time, the slow encroachment of impersonal architecture -- with insight and wit. Specifically, she takes aim on a then-popular color, using the word "mauve" in any number of insulting ways. She speaks of low-level roommate arguments as the “pale-mauve hostility you find among women.” Though hardly a new color at the time (it goes back to at least the late 1800s, and possibly even the 1600s), it recurs at least four times within the book as a metaphor for the low-heat fires of contemporary women’s passion, moments that should be flare-ups, but only sputter with passive-aggression. And also, a tacky-ass color that was everywhere at the time.Our protagonist, Marian McAlpin, works for an advertising company designing surveys. When we meet her, she's working on the Moose Beer account ("Moose, Moose/from the land of pine and spruce/tingly, heady, rough and ready..."), trying to figure out how to sell their brand to Gord Six-Pack (this is set in Canada, after all), whether they can lock into the outdoorsman image, or whether to temper it by adding "whether fishing, camping, or just plain relaxing after a hard day." Marian goes door-to-door, encountering teetotalers, boozehounds, and of course, old-fashioned creepsters who want to know what a purty girl like her is doing in a rough neighborhood like this.Though all the characters are well-developed and enjoyable, each has his or her own "thing" that advances the story and the ideas. Marian, coming off sometimes like Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion, is slowly pulling away from herself, unable to endure scrutiny and afraid to make more trouble for her fiancee, Peter; her roommate Ainsley tends to pick up on trends she's read about in magazines; Peter is a camera nut and deathly afraid of being tied down by a woman; Clara and Joe are the representation of new parents, always exhausted, living in squalor, and using their single friends to tell them about the outside world they've since lost; old college friend Len is a love-em-and-leave-em type who preferences "corrupting" young girls. Each holds on to his or her characteristic throughout the story, making only minor ideological adjustments in response to the rising action of the plot.The aspect of The Edible Woman that stuck with me is how little some of these issues have changed in the past 46 years. Men are constantly expressing their fears of "being tied down," living faux bon vivant lifestyles, talking about tripods and the best lenses for vacation photography, while the women bend over backwards not to trample their fragile egos. “Of course I had to adjust to his moods, but that’s true of any man, and his were too obvious to cause much difficulty," says Marian. Peter likes to be in the position of teaching her, of providing for her, but also not being saddled into being the provider and husband just yet. Marian's responses to this gradually get more and more strange: after exiting a restaurant with another couple, Marian inexplicably begins running down the street at a mad pace. She doesn't know what she's running from, but something is suffocating her. Later, while the quartet meet at Len's place, during which Peter and Len bond over cameras, Marian finds herself drawn to the space between the bed and the wall, sliding down where she can't be seen or heard. “I would have rather gone home, but I didn’t want to cause Peter any more trouble that night,” she explains. Eventually, she slides underneath the bed, hoping that she'll be missed eventually, but not too soon. “In spite of the narrowness and dust I was glad I didn’t have to sit up there in the reverberating hot glare of the room. Though I was only two or three feet lower than the rest of them, I was thinking of the room as “up there.” I myself was underground, I had dug myself a private burrow. I felt smug.” Only Peter's angry response seems a bit overt and MCP-ish in our present day: “’Ainsley behaved herself properly, why couldn’t you? The trouble with you is,’ he said savagely, ‘you’re just rejecting your femininity.’” But placating these baby-men she must, because if not, “he’ll evaporate. I won’t be able to call him up when it’s really essential, he’d accuse me of trying to monopolize his time or of making demands on him or something.”Apart from that, though, any of the main set pieces of the book ask questions as current and still-unanswered by society as any of the best skits on Inside Amy Schumer. There's also several scenes in which the men shrink up when their ladies take the dominant sexual role, a banner taken up by Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman with unblinking ferocity eight years later. As the book progresses, Marian finds herself unable to eat certain foods. First it's red meat, then chicken. These are animals that were once alive. Then, eggs (a mouthful of cake evokes the bursting of blood vessels in her mouth), and even vegetables -- she can imagine root vegetables like carrots screaming as they're pulled out of the ground. Her food fears seem tied to her unraveling sense of self. Soon, she's living on the new rice pudding her company is advertising and not much else, and even that seems a bit off. Despite the title, this aspect of the story is secondary to Marian's various dalliances with modern men and women, including ninth-year grad student Duncan, who she takes an abstract fancy to after his enigmatic response to her beer survey.Like many first or early novels, the ideas float up on the surface, and the story isn't robust enough to blend with them. Each new location seems like a chance to poke or prod a modern social convention. We keep finding ourselves at the same three or four locations, doing more or less the same things for emphasis. Some moments are striking -- as Marian moves from thinking about her own life and desires to being a dutiful fiance to Peter, the narrative moves from first-person to third, speaking about herself as an abstraction. Duncan and his roommates provide some fine, funny academic satire, kind of like a Canadian version of The Young Ones but with less filth and more more pseudo-profundity (“What we need is a new cataclysm...Another Black Death...birth would be considered essential again...”). Unfortunately, the book's finale, a strange ritual that restores the first-person narration, is a bit underwhelming in relation to what we've been building to.I'm not at all unhappy that I started with The Edible Woman. If the actual storyline and a few details seem dated, the concerns and struggles of Marian and Ainsley and Cara all the edible women here feel, sadly, as fresh and unresolved as ever. If the story and pacing and plot aren't quite all there yet, well, there's plenty of time for that.
The story in The Edible Woman takes place in the 1960s. With that in mind, I attempted to ease my modern depictions, expectations, and conclusion about the 1960s. I found the book to be a slow read and, like many others, I enjoyed the metaphors that were heavily sprinkled throughout the story that paralleled the lives of Marian and Ainsley. I comprehend the feminist aspect of the story. For me, though, this book was more about the human aspects of life that collided with the lives of these women. I found this to be a story of two women who think they know what they want, but doubt themselves, and their circumstances. Marian is newly engaged and finds herself slowly repulsed by food. She is doing what women are expected to do, get married and have children. The woman downstairs from Marian and Ainsley’s apartment represents how women should act. Not a lot of noise and no boys before marriage. For me, Marian’s feelings of being consumed are her mind’s way of preparing for a cage that she simply isn’t ready for and that is marriage. I don’t think she knows what she wants, but subconsciously she doesn’t want to spend her life with Peter. I think she struggles a lot with her subconscious. She writes: “It was my subconscious getting ahead of my conscious self, and the subconscious has its own logic. The way I went about doing things may have been a little inconsistent with my true personality, but are the results inconsistent?”I loathed Ainsley. I can understand her wanting to break away from the norm (cage?) of marriage. I understood the feeling and the wanting of a loving relationship between a mother and her child exclusively. I dislike the dishonest way she went about doing it. I also disliked that she changed her mind about wanting the father back in her child’s life. She was was the posterchild for the dramatic, flakey, and guilt-driving female archetype. I did not care for her at all.My favorite character was Duncan. Duncan represented the human alternative to the social expectation. I like that he is clear about what he wants for himself and what he doesn’t want. I think it is this emotional stability that puts Marian’s life into perspective as the story evolves. Duncan’s assuredness is what Ainsley and Peter do not have. Marian is attracted to that, but Duncan will not have her in the way she wants, in a relationship. I think this is perfect. I think this is good for Marian despite her disappointment and his rejection of a relationship with her. I did not want them to be together. That would be too perfect just like her marriage to Peter was expected to be. Clara-I feel that Marian’s relationship with Clara is a voyeuristic one, anymore. Clara has a domestic reality that Marian observes. Marian observes Clara in a way that ensures Marian will eventually end up like Clara. The state of Clara’s house disgusts Marian, but Clara is the only friend who has no inhibitions about the fabricated life that Marian will actually marry into. Clara’s house may be a mess, but she doesn’t have to pretend with Joe. She is happy the way Clara will never be with Peter. Other observations-Marian’s job provides a pension and she is upset that she must pay into it. In today’s society that concept is all too extinct. When Marian says she doesn’t want to join the pension plan she is told that it is obligatory. Mrs. Grot explains “Yes, you see if nobody paid into it, nobody would be able to get anything out of it, would they?” This is painfully real this in 2012. The days of pensions are over and we are responsible for our own retirement funds. The idea of a pension and even universal healthcare is now deemed as Socialism. How times have changed. There are so many people who would love have the option for a pension.Ainsley is smoking in a restaurant. Very strange to even read about.On the topic of breastfeeding and children Ainsley states that “every woman should have at least one baby.” This reminded me of when I worked at an animal shelter and a man told me that all female dogs should have at least one litter of puppies. It’s a backwoods concept in today’s modern world.Vegetarianism-Older people (Boomers and older) give me the hardest time about being a vegetarian. This book explained why. Marian says to herself “I’m turning into a vegetarian, one of those cranks.” In the 60s Vegetarianism was seen as sort of a disfunction due to the lack of proper protein (meat). Our modern conveniences give us so many alternatives to meat and the access to the internet provides nutritional education about how to acquire the "unattainable" complete protein. I also made connection of old views held in the 60s. Ainsley said that there is scientific proof that if she has a boy that, without a father figure, the boy will grow up to be a “ho-ho-ho homesexual.” Many people I know who grew lived in the 50s and 60s simply cannot let go of these old world views. I find it both frustrating and amusing. These views are severely outdated yet those on the receiving end of these misconceptions suffer greatly at this prejudice. I could relate to Marian’s power of observation. When she was at dinner at Duncan’s place she took mental inventory of the table and her surroundings. I take meticulous mental notes about my surroundings and knew her thought process. I can also relate to how she finds herself looking objectively about the people around her. When she was sitting around the office virgins she saw that they were indeed women, but they were not like her. They were superficial. I have felt like that around most women most of my life and I find it worse in mother’s groups. I’m usually on the outside looking in at female ramblings. Quotes I liked:“‘The thing to do,’ she told herself, ‘is to keep calm.’ At times when she had meditated on the question she concluded that the stand it had taken was an ethical one: it simply refused to eat anything that had once been, or (like oysters on the half-shell) might still be living.”“How long did it take to acquire the patina of lower-middle income domesticity?” Marian observing Clara state of motherhood.“She put a forkful into her mouth and chewed it slowly; it felt spongy and cellular against her tongue, like the bursting of thousands of tiny lungs.” MarianWhen Marian and Duncan are in the first laundromat scene Duncan says something that, I think, gets the philosophical ball rolling about the feminism, food, and sex theme of the book.“You might do something destructive: hunger is more basic than love. Florence Nightengale was a cannibal, you know.”
What do You think about The Edible Woman (1998)?
Fun read. Poor Marian, although, I did get to a point where I just wished she'd go to a bit of therapy. Probably because of how close to home her behavior and situation were. Too much exposition. The cake really was terrifying in the most perfect way, as was Duncan and all the non-friends. Clara and Joe were my favorite, followed closely by Leonard receding into the recesses of their house, playing with Arthur's toys, and fighting over them with him. It was a treat to see so many stereotypes I've been poring over lately characterized so well and so entertainingly. "My skin felt stifled, as though I was enclosed in a layer of moist dough.""She registered neither pleasure nor boredom; her inert patience was that of a pitcher-plant in a swamp with its hollow bulbous leaves half-filled with water, waiting for some insect to be attracted, drowned, and digested.""When I woke up on Sunday morning--it was closer to Sunday afternoon--my mind was at first as empty as though someone had scooped out the inside of my skull like a cantaloupe and left me only the rind to think with.""You were supposed to keep your live turtle in a cardboard box or other cage for about a week, loving it and feeding it hamburger to get rid of its impurities. Then just as it was beginning to trust you and perhaps follow you around the kitchen like a sluggish but devoted hard-shelled spaniel, you put it one day into a cauldron of cold water (where no doubt it would swim and dive happily, at first) and then brought it slowly to the boil. The whole procedure was reminiscent of the deaths of early Christian martyrs.""Marian's mind grasped at the word 'immature', turning it over like a curious pebble found on the beach. It suggested an unripe ear of corn, and other things of a vegetable or fruitlike nature. You were green and then you ripened: became mature. Dresses for the mature figure. In other words, fat."
—Julie
I read this book to fill in a square on my "book bingo sheet" that I'm doing with some friends, it filled in "the first book by a favorite author." And boy, was it ever a *first* book. It was stunningly original, as per the usual with Atwood, but it lacked her normal beautiful phrasing and structure. The characters were not as poignant as she usually writes them, but I feel like I could see the beginnings of Crake in Duncan, the lost soul of the unnamed Handmaiden in Marian, etc. The symbolism of the food with the rumblings of Duncan's roommates in the background would have been earthshattering had Marian's relation to food been more central, more flushed out as not just a theme, but as a character of the book itself. Instead, despite its omnipresence in the conclusion, Atwood almost seems embarassed to embrace the eccentric idea of "the edible woman" in full force, and it weakens the book. I feel that if she re-wrote it, and delivered it as she would now, Marian's inability to eat as she, herself, is consumed, would be the forefront of the book. I almost wish she would, its original, primal, and powerful, and I want to be able to relish the idea as I have relished Atwood's other works.It had an all around familiar feeling of Atwood, pregnant with brilliance, but not quite delivering like she would eventually do in her novels.
—Becky
I don't think I could have read "The Edible Woman" at a better time than now, when topics of feminism are becoming more and more present. I originally picked up this book because of its title and because I wanted to check out some Atwood--admittedly, this is my first time reading her. The title alone has so many implications--that women are consumable, visceral, sinewy, sexual, and all of the above. The main character is so honest and real that I often forgot throughout the book that she was being consumed the whole time. It wasn't until the last few chapters where the title suddenly becomes perfectly apt and everything falls into place. I love the balance between feminine power and the loss of power in this book, present in Marian, her friend Ainsley, and her friend Clara. Ainsley is desperate to become pregnant because she believes that having a baby is the ultimate sign of womanhood, and she is matched against Clara who may be described as slightly more classy than "barefoot and pregnant". She has two kids running around, another one on the way, and a husband who becomes the natural caretaker because of her weak state. Despite these women feeling like they have power over the situation, they don't realize how they fall into the masculine societal norms. Marian seems vaguely aware of the society she is living in, yet unaware of how to shift the boundaries. She falls for Duncan, an English graduate student, and claims that she is never disturbed by his admittance of the fact that he may only be using her. And I can't help but completely agree with his spot-on soliloquy: "[Grad school] looks exciting when you're an eager brilliant undergraduate. They all say, Go on to graduate studies, and they give you a bit of money; and so you do, and you think, Now I'm going to find out the real truth. But you don't find out, exactly, and things get pickier and pickier and more and more stale, and it all collapses in a welter of commas and shredded footnotes, and after a while it's like anything else:you've got stuck in it and and you can't get out, and you wonder how you got there in the first place" (98-99). If I could hug Duncan, without breaking his brittle frame, I would. This book is so now and touches me on so many levels. It turns me inside out, puts frosting on me, and makes me feel like eating and being eaten are essentially the same thing and rather than wonder if women should be exposing themselves or covering themselves up, we should ask if we are being eaten and who is it good for?
—Elena Tomorowitz
