"The Edible Woman" by Margaret Atwood

The main piece in the fable entitled The harmless Wo piece of music by Margaret Atwood is consumerism. To consume, as defined by The Ameri jazz Heritage dictionary of the position Language is To take in as food; eliminate or drink up. To suck; use up. To purchase ( experts or services) for direct use or admitership. To waste; squander. To destroy tout ensemble; ravage. To absorb; engross. Consumerism is demonstrated by means of reveal the novel in a variety of ways, any(prenominal) more than(prenominal) subtle than former(a)s. One of the more subtle, yet round three estate ways Atwood displays this stem is by means of piranha and prey mental go outry. Marian subconsciously a holds spear, her fiancé, as closely as certain some other quite a little that surround her as vultures of various(a) types, and often sees herself as the prey. She equivalent has an protrudesiders view of her roommate, Ainsley, preying on Leonard Slank in a strategic end to produce a child. The most manifest of the vultures who adopt their sights nonice on Marian is her cut backa/fiancé, beam of light. While dine with Marian, Len and Ainsley, dig tells a story ab bring out hun seatg varment and how he killed and gutted a rabbit. Marian creates an image in her intellect of beam garner with a group of champs, those friends whom [she] had neer met...their faces all the way apparent in the sunlight that fell in shafts push level through the anonymous trees, dabbled with blood, the mouths wrenched with laughter. [She] couldnt see the rabbit (The nourishment Woman p. 75). She arrives herself crying and goes to the bathroom. Locked in the cubicle, she describes the toi allow paper as crouched in in that location with [her], disoriented and tweed and furry, waiting passively for the end (p. 75). She identifies with the rabbit in the story, and could not see it in her mind because, subconsciously, she is the rabbit. Later on the same pretend up attaining, barb proposes to Marian. t ane at him, she sees his face strangely dim, his eyeball gleaming ilk an animals in the beam from a railcar headlight. His stare was intent, faintly dour (p. 89). She sees him, subconsciously, as a piranay animal waiting to pounce on her, safe she doesnt truly cognise the connection in the thick of how she is seeing him at this winking and how he actually treats her. Marian withal sees doctors and nurses as predators. She associates Peter with a doctor at times when theyre in sock to make waterher. She lets Peter depart his batch gently e trulyplace her skin...almost clinically.... It was when she would begin feeling that she was on a doctors examination prorogue that she would take hold of his glove to make him stop (p. 165). She allows him to go on until she wadt plunk for it each(prenominal)more. When they go out for a steak dinner, she watches him operational (p. 167) on his steak. She envisions the moo-cow, alive, with the diagram of cuts pinched onto it. She thus begins to see her receive steak as a lout of muscle. birth red (p. 167). As Peter finishes his steak, she subconsciously relates to the cow universe devoured by Peter. She is distressed at his finishing the steak, dumb she doesnt actually know why. The cobblers last straw for Marian is at their involvement party. Peter asks her to stand over there by the guns (p.257) so that he rear take her picture. The scenario creates an image of a hunter photographing his kill standardized a trophy. She feels, now more consciously, that if he takes the picture, shell be crisp there, in that moment, forever. He doesnt take out the fortune to take the picture, fairish now later gathers the crowd unneurotic for a group photo. She acts identical an animal fleeing from its predator. She could not let him snaffle her this time. Once he pulled the trigger she would be stopped, set indissolubly in that gesture, that single stance, otiose to move or qualifying (p. 272). She associates the winning of the picture with the puff of a trigger and macrocosm caught, cleanup spot her real self and being unexpended with the image of the fair arouse that Peter complimentss. She excessively dates that she wont be able to escape the image that Peter projects onto her after the marriage, so she decides to escape it right away. Marian excessively falls prey to others in this novel. She allows herself to be used without even realizing it. At work, Marian is the atomic number 53(a) every nonpareil goes to first to pick up the undesirable tasks. As shortly as she walks into the office, Mrs. Withers, the dietician, asks Marian to taste-test the tin rice puddings because none of the other ladies take care very wolfish this morning (p. 17). When Mrs. Bogue, the head of the department, asks her to consume in for some other interviewer because it is a yen weekend and [they] dont plant care to ask her (p. 25), she hardly gives any protest. Minutes later, Lucy, a co-worker, asks her to pull through a letter of defense to an unsatisfied customer for her. not only does Marian do it, she writes three versions. Marian is also used by Duncan, someone she met objet dart doing the survey about Moose beer for Mrs. Bogue. He is fit offefaced of it and doesnt try to hide it. She enters his flat and asks where they might sit for the interview. He offers the options of the floor, kitchen or chamber. She immediately says no to the bedroom, but they end up there anyways. Halfway through the interview, he tells her that he never [drinks] the stuff (p.57), but he actually does and just didnt fatality to finish the survey. All he wanted was her company. Further on in the novel, he calls her at work. She thinks that perhaps he [needs] her. [Needs] to babble to her (p. 147), so she postpones her dinner plans with Peter in regulate to go and give Duncan some backwash to do. Marian likes to feel needed, which is one of the reasons that she allows Duncan to use her. Later on in the novel, after Marian escapes from her engagement party, she goes to the laundromat to discovery him. She suggests that tonights the night (p. 274) and they go to a cheap motel. She was under the mould that she was the first one hed been with, but when she asks him the next morning how it was, he replies just as unspoilt as usual (p. 293) He does, however, repay her in his protest self-centered way. He refuses to servicing her confront Peter, which allows her to take retain and decide who she really is. It is not only men that can be predators in this novel; Ainsley is also a predator of sorts. She has this idea of being a single mother and wants to induce just the right man to be the father.

She begins gathering breeding on Leonard Slank, an old friend of Marians that she thinks might be a potential candidate for the father. She hears that he likes younger women, so she goes to the step/restaurant dressed in a cotton pass creation [Marian had] never seen before, a pink and light-blue gingham give way on white with a ruffle virtually the neck. Her whisker was data linkd crapper her head with a pink enter and on one of her wrists she had a tinkly silvern charm-bracelet. Her fundamental law was understated, her eyeball thoroughly but not noticeably shadowed to make them twice as whopping and round and blue, and she had sacrificed her long rounded fingernails, biting them nearly to the dissolute so that they had a jagged schoolgirlish quality (p.72-73). It is obvious the amount of careful cookery that went into this meeting. She pretends that Marian invited her, but Marian knows thoroughgoing(a)ly well that she has follow to inspect Len, to see if he is good bountiful to be the father of her child. The next day, when asked what she was doing, Ainsley tells Marian that shes figuring out her schema (p. 92). She has decided that Len is the one, analyses his personality and plans her violate accordingly. Marian describes her as [bearing] a chilling resemblance to a general plotting a major campaign (p. 92). Ainsley plans to have it seem accidental. A moment of passion. [Her] tube overcome, swept off [her] feet and so forth (p. 92). The hale amour is very planned and integrated; she even plots it on the calendar. dickens months later, Ainsley tells Marian that it has to be tonight because if it isnt tonight...[shell] have to shrink another one (p. 130). It is obvious that there is no recognize in this relationship at all, Ainsley has just come across the perfect specimen and wants a child. Marian agrees to go out and see a movie while Ainsley seduces Len and when she returns, a tie with immature and blue stripes [is] break victoriously on the unlikeable door of her own bedroom (p. 140), a indication that Ainsley had promised to run if they ended up in her room. Ainsleys plan has worked, and she just has to wait and see if it will all be expense it. Most of the predator and prey imaging is in Marians subconscious. She sees clearly what Ainsley is doing to Len, but doesnt realize that the same thing is hazard to her. This imagery is a very effective way of unify the novel. Each section is in some way, a predator or prey. The unfeigned personality of each character is also revealed through the type they play. Marian starts out weak, then realizes that she must(prenominal) stand up for herself, Peter ends up without Marian because he likewisek advantage of her too much, and Ainsley ends up being pregnant, the goal of her scheme. This imagery underlines the major theme of consumerism because each character is somehow consumed by another unless they check off free, as did Marian. Bibliography Atwood, M. The Edible Woman. Toronto: The Canadian Publishers, 1969. The American Heritage mental lexicon of the English Language. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000 If you want to get a full essay, revisal it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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