A Narratological Approach: Existentialist Feminism In The Edible Woman

The Edible Woman, published in 1969, is the first novel of the distinguished Canadian writer—Margaret Atwood. By depicting a young woman’s spiritual journey from internalizing femininity to regain her own independent identity in the patriarchal society, this book provides us with an epitome of females’ survival predicament in 1960 s in Canada.Taking the facets of focalization and thought presentation in narratology as the theoretical basis, this paper penetrates into the typical corpora of The Edible Woman by employing theories of first-person internal focalization, first-person external focalization, third-person fixed internal focalization, and typical three modes of thought presentation, respectively. By analyzing Marian from the internal and external focalization, we can learn her compliance and resistance in the early period when facing male-dominated culture. However, as the approach of her wedding with Peter, the internalization of femininity, revealed from different facets of focalization, turns Marian into a byproduct of the patriarchal society. Then, the text transforms into third-person external focalization, and modes of thought presentation are applied to witness her strenuous journey from subconscious body resistance to getting her neck out of the yoke of matrimony consciously. Based on the combination of narratological approach and the concept of existentialist feminism proposed by Simone de Beauvoir, the paper digs into the historical origin of the idea why females are supposed to be inferior to males by taking Marian’s personal experience as an example, further verifying Atwood’s creative intention of completely representing a struggle with fate of a well-educated young female being blocked by stereotypical femininity under male oppression and her continuous pursuit of independent personality, and in the meantime demonstrating Atwood’s steadfast determination to break the state of being-in-itself from the origin and to strive for being-for-itself as well.Compared with previous analyses based merely on literature research, this paper takes the theory of narratology as its framework and analyzes Marian’s spiritual transformation by means of a multitude of case studies. The study shows that the change of narrative technique is related to the highlight of the theme artfully, making readers identify Marian’s loss and return both from narrative forms and profound connotation, and getting people thinking about the condition for females’ survival in the modern world.