The Edible Woman

After the holidays pass, Marian goes grocery shopping for a dinner she is hosting that night with Clara, Joe, and Peter. She is distracted by the advertisements and marketing used on the products, finding it difficult to resist impulsively buying things she does not need or cannot eat. She feels “unusually susceptible” to the advertisements. She wishes she could resume eating meat, especially to make social dinners easier to bear. Now that they are engaged, Peter has introduced Marian to his friends on several occasions. Marian struggles to remember their individual names, as they are all so similar and their identities tend to blur together for her.

Marian returns to her apartment to begin cooking. While peeling a carrot for the salad, she realizes that the carrot had a life in the ground before being harvested, and her body reacts negatively toward it; she won’t be able to eat carrots any longer. Marian is disappointed that Peter doesn’t connect with Clara or Joe during dinner and considers the night a failure. Ainsley returns home from the prenatal clinic in distress. She learned from the resident psychologist that a father figure is essential in a young boy’s development, and as Ainsley has convinced herself that the child will be male, she reconsiders her plan of raising the child on her own.

Three weeks following Marian’s dinner party, and only five weeks until the wedding date, Marian and Duncan meet at the Museum to visit the Egyptian exhibit. The two have been meeting more frequently in the preceding weeks, and while Marian senses that Duncan is simply using her as an emotional outlet, she “didn’t at all mind being used” (200). Spending time with Duncan is a relief from Peter, as she doesn’t have to worry about putting on an act of affection and interest.

Duncan speaks of his roommates and how they continue to behave like his parents. They visit the mummy room, which is Duncan’s favorite, and Marian becomes interested in a display of a skeleton laying in the fetal position. They go to the museum’s café for coffee, where Duncan proposes that the two of them begin having sex. He explains that he has never been able to invest himself in a sexual partner but feels that Marian would allow him to explore his sexuality without expecting anything further of him. Until that point, Marian had justified hiding her frequent meetings with Duncan from Peter as they are innocent. She does not answer Duncan’s suggestion, noticing that Duncan’s roommates are sitting in the café nearby.

Fish and Trevor invite Marian over for dinner; she accepts, then privately warns Duncan about her recent struggles with eating. Duncan reveals a “malicious curiosity” to know more about her eating habits yet convinces her that it won’t be an issue.

Before Marian and Duncan enter his apartment, Marian takes off her engagement ring and hides it in her purse. Duncan’s roommate Trevor, who is committed to cooking an extravagant dinner, prepares multiple courses. Marian flatters his cooking and listens to both him and Fish talk about their literary studies. They are currently analyzing works of literature that deal with sex, birth rates, or women’s bodies. When Trevor is in the kitchen getting the next course ready and Fish is too preoccupied with talking to notice, Marian throws the meat on her plate across the table for Duncan to eat.

Duncan walks her halfway back to her apartment. Their conversation focuses on Duncan and his roommates, allowing Marian to feel relieved at the “total absence all evening of any reference to or question about herself” (219). Duncan brings up his proposition of sex again, confessing that he hopes to discover Marian to be “real” if they have sex. Marian agrees to have sex with him. When they part, Marian takes her ring from her purse, “from among the pennies, nickels, and dimes” (221), and walks the rest of the way by herself.

Marian wakes one morning to find that her body rejects the canned rice pudding she planned to have for breakfast. She becomes increasingly anxious about what married life will be like as she won’t be able to hide her habits at every meal with Peter. She considers seeking help and visits Clara with the intention of asking her advice. Seeing Clara at home with her children, Marian realizes that Clara’s life has already happened and all that is left for Clara is remaining in the same emotional and experiential space. She herself is in a transitionary phase that will determine the course of her life; her greatest fear at the moment is not making autonomous decisions in her life and becoming like Clara, who lives a predictable and static life.

When she tells Clara of her body’s inability to eat certain foods, Clara responds that it must only be nerves about the wedding. Later that day Marian visits Peter and asks him whether he considers her normal. He responds that she is completely normal to him. She attempts to eat some of the Valentine’s cake they have leftover, but the cake’s spongey texture feels “like the bursting of thousands of tiny lungs” (227) in her mouth. In the end, she gives the rest of the cake to Peter.

To prepare for an important party that Peter is hosting that night, Marian gets her hair done and has an expensive dress tailored. She gives the hairdresser permission to give her any hairdo he wants as she cannot decide herself, then resents “feeling like a slab of flesh, an object” (229) while he works. Marian compares the hairstylist to a doctor and the experience of getting her hair cut to a medical procedure she wishes she had anesthesia to help her through. Though the finished style is too “extreme” for Marian, she accepts it without complaint.

Marian picks up her tailored dress, also a style that is too ornate for her, then returns to the apartment to find Ainsley and Len arguing. Ainsley is now determined to make Len marry her to give their child a father figure. Len leaves in anger, cursing and causing a scene in front of the other tenants and the landlady. Once he is gone, Ainsley announces she’ll have to find another man to act as a father figure for the baby.