The Edible
Woman
A Comic-Satirical View
of Women’s Positions
in Society
General
Question
• Why does Marian cry in the Park Plaza
and then run away from her friends?
How is Peter presented in this scene?
• Why does she kiss Duncan (the man at
the laundromat)?
Outline
• Background: 50’s and 60’s in
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Canada
Society and its stagnant conformity;
Examples of femininity
Marian’s interview
Examples of Masculinity: Peter and Len
Chap 9-10: Marian’s responses
Duncan and his views of cannibalism
Images of Food, Eating and Body
50’s in Canada
Myth of
Domesticity
• After WW II (1945)
• Myth – 1) calling women back home
Propaganda: “When will Mother be home again,
doing what she does best, making a home for
Daddy and me?” (Seen in magazines,
sermons, political rhetoric, school textbooks &
the doctor’s advice)
2) Women as submissive to and supportive of
men, domestic and nourishing
50’s in Canada
Reality of
Women at Work
• Post-War Reality – 1) many reluctant to give
up their paychecks and independence;
• 2) in 1947 ¼ of Canadian women in work
force;
• 3) poor white women, single mothers, native
women, black domestic servants, etc.
• 4) professional jobs were largely unavailable
to women; their jobs were mostly factory
labour, domestic service, sales and
secretary;
50’s in Canada
Myth of
Femininity
• Sweet and sexy:
• Sexiness = blond, long legs, cute curls,
big breasts, etc.
50’s 60’s in Canada
Changes
• More young women were allowed to exter
universities.
• 1950 -- 25 % women;
• The new “single girl” phenomenon. Age of
first marriage started to rise slowly.
•  new definitions of “femaleness” and female
sexuality in the 60’s.
• Influence of The Feminine Mystique (1963)
and the other American feminist ideas of
autonomy and women’s rights.
50’s 60’s in Canada
Domesticity
• & Child birth:
• Birth control pills– began to be used in the
States in 1960
• Birth control advice from physicians considered
illegal in Canada until 1969
•  abortion debate (pro-choice, pro-life) in the
70’s.
Edible Woman:
Plot Summary
• Part I – sense of crisis, escape and
compromise;
• Part 2 – in between Duncan and Peter;
fear of being consumed  developing
anorexia;
• Part 3 – solutions
Society
• Seymour Survey:
1) The fixed hierarchy in the office pp. 14-15;
2) stagnant, lack of energy; p. 11
3) controlling: Pension Plan;
4) Map – p. 19
• The landlady: conservative, keeping an
eye on them, insist on “decency”
Society (2)
• Comic or grotesque episodes showing
people’s exploitation and repression of
others’ bodies.
• pp. 17-18;
• Quebec
•  social cannibalism.
Society (3)
• What do you think about Duncan’s
description of graduate school (pp. 101
- 103)
Maternity:
Ainsley vs. Clara
• Clara (chaps 3, 4)– ad
beauty turned into a
monstrously pregnant
body.
• pp. 28—her body;
• 33 -- her past and
present;
• 34 – her present
passivity;
• 36 her views of the pill;
• Knows what she
wants to do p. 9
• Ainsley chap 5
• Wholeness of life or
cattle-breeding pp.
39-41
Marian’s nightmare
More Questions
• What do you think about Marian’s work?
• What do you think about her
relationship with Peter?
• What kind of person is “the man at the
laudromat”?
Marian’s Work
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•
“What else can you do with a B.A.
these days?” pp. 10; 54.
Re-enforcing social order (looks for a
proper district) pp. 43-44
Encounters and is subject to the other
fixed value standards:
1) puritan self-righteousness;
2) Male sexism
Peter
• A lawyer on the rise 56;
• His room—weapons 58; (the other
weapons—camera and his look 72;)
• Needs Trigger to be his mirror image p. 23;
• Uses Marian as support pp. 60; expects
Marian to meet his expectations 63, 65;
• Against female predator 65
• Peter on hunting 70-71 Marian’s realization
of being used as “stage-prop.” 72
Len Slank
• Len: a womanizer esp. interested in
innocent women 90
• Ainsley’s action p. 69 –performs the role
of an innocent girl to get her “prey.”
Another reason for
Marian’s escape
Chapters 9 - 10:
Peter’s ways of controlling Marian
– the fourth weapon—car;
– Marriage 
• Marian’s Responses
– Marian sees him as a rescuer 92-93-94;
Duncan
• Not masculine, or complete as a
subject – his body p. 47;
• Marian’s is attracted to his ideas:
– His interpretation of the ad-- pp. 51-53—reveals
the relations between food industry and patriarchal
ideologies of masculinity and consumption.
– His self-criticism (of the grads’ life)—liquid
confessing like “an uncooked egg”
– His sharp perception of their mutual needs 105
Images:
Eating, Food &
Predator/Prey
• The survey company: rice pudding, beer, (later,
tomato juice, meat cleaver, etc.)
• Marian’s work: “licking” stamps
• The pension plan will “feed off [her] salary” (18)
• Work place as soup 11, as a three-layer sandwich
13;
• One interviewee’s voice -- 45
• Ainsley escapes from Len as if from a “giant squid”
87
• The novel’s epigraph
Images: Body
• P. 19 the map like measles;
• Clara’s body;
• p. 85 – As Peter is watching her, Marian
feels “limp as a damp kleenex.”
• P. 106 – Duncan’s body like tissue
paper, too.
• Marian’s skull—”like a cantaloup” 86;
• (Ainsley, like a mermaid)
Reference
• Silverman, Eliane Leslau. “Changes in
Women’s Lives.” A Passion for Identity:
An Introduction to Canadian Studies.
3rd ed. Ed. David Taras and Beverly
Rasporich. Toronto: International
Thomson P, 1997.