| Margaret Atwood is internationally known as "a champion of Canadian literature" for her glorious contribution to English literature and as an expert in poetry, novels, short stories and literary review. The Edible Woman is her first novel. Although not refined as her later works, it is unique in that it was written during a time when many of the feminist ideas in the novel hadn't been fully explored by western culture yet. In the novel, Atwood successfully brings together ideas of gender roles, consumerism and perceptions of self, which are of revealing significance even today.This thesis examines Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman, which acts out the search for female identity in contemporary western consumer society. In my discussion of the novel, women, being docile, underpaid workers, are productive in the workplace, and being compliant wives, are reproductive in the service of the nuclear family. Through the analysis of a woman's (namely Marian's) anorexia and self-alienation, this thesis shows how women are consumed and appropriated by the consumer society. The authentic-self which is fragmented and lost can only be regained through the woman's confrontation with the predicament and reconstruction of a braver self-reliant persona.Section One is concerned with a woman's role in the consumer society of 1960s' Canada through the description of Marian's professional life and Clara's domestic life. Marian McAlphin, one among the masses of women who graduated with BA degrees in the 1960s ends up stuck in a menial job. Her work as a consumer consultant gives her the illusion of a meaningful occupation but fails utterly to provide her with any real direction in life. Being what Judith Ann called "secretarial proletariat", Marian contemplates a man and a marriage as a way out of her troublesome work. But marital life has changed her friend Clara, a former "medieval beauty", into a woman with only natural life, exhausted in giving birth. Clara has turned herself into an instrument to multiply lives. Marian's roommate Ainsley is absorbed in motherhood but determined not to marry. Clara's horrible, miserable marital life and Ainsley's radical ideas intensify Marian's work-related paranoia. Marian fails to find a positive role model in both professional life and domestic life, she is left in an empty state and succumb to irrational behavior due to her lack of self-knowledge. She just follows the social expectation---being a stereotyped femininity by accepting Peter's proposal of marriage.In Section Two the thesis focuses on Marian's exploration of the self. Marian gradually achieves self-knowledge through her painful experiences with two men. The section begins with a discussion of Peter's role as a consumer man prescribed by the patriarchal culture in the society. His idea on gender roles is that male should dominate female, female is there to meet the needs of male. Peter chooses Marian because of her willingness to give in to his desires. Throughout the story Peter tries to change Marian to match his image of the perfect femininity. Influenced by consumerism, Marian chooses Peter according to his "package" without knowing his real inside. Throughout her interaction with Peter, Marian experiences an escalating anxiety of being hunted and captured. Marian's female passivity leads to her objectification, she begins to identify herself with edible things. Gradually she loses her ability to eat. The roots of her anorexia are explored: it is her body's refusal to participate in the consumerism and her body's rejection of the "femininity" which imposed on her by the external expectation. Along with Marian's inability to eat, she also imagines her body dissolving. According to Emma Parker, eating is employed as a metaphor for power, powerlessness is primarily symbolized by non-eating. Body, that which food fuels, becomes a secondary site of powerlessness, Hence Atwood's heroines experiences a strong sense of unease about their body. Marian tries to erect a protective "m...
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