| This paper examines (the manner in which) Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman plays out the objectification, fragmentation, and consumption of female desire in contemporary Western society. In my discussion of the novel, the fundamental opposition of man/woman becomes self/other and consumer/consumed with man's culture transforming women's nature. In the first chapter, by way of Sherry Ortner and Simone de Beauvoir, women are established as targets of the male gaze, the embodiment of social codes within a patriarchal context. In the second chapter, I will examine women's disease and alienation (namely Marian's) that contributes to fragmentation and a loss of an authentic self. In the third part, I argue that women's fragmented identity is then assimilated into a cultural agenda, but that ultimately as Atwood's narrative suggests, this assimilation can be nonetheless averted or retarded through small acts of resistance. |
