"May woman choose?": Reflections on Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman and the possibilities for women in the patriarchal capitalist society
The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood, Capitalist Patriarchy.
Abstract
Margaret Atwood wrote The Edible Woman (in Portuguese, A Mulher Comestível), her first novel, between the spring and summer of 1965. The novel would only be published four years later, in 1969, for marketing reasons, since her first book of poems, published a few years earlier, proved itself to be a success in sales. In The Edible Woman, we get to know some female characters for whom marriage and motherhood seem to be the main female experiences. Marian, the main character, is undecided about choosing between a marriage that promises a future in which she will get restricted to the realms of domestic life and a job that does not value her skills. In this context, a crisis begins in which, unconsciously to her, Marian's body seems to take control of her actions through a refusal to consume food. The main character's crisis seems to be linked with the oppression imposed by the patriarchy, combined with the exploitation inherent in the capitalist economic system. Based on this, I propose to relate the plot of The Edible Woman to some theories of Feminist Criticism, associated with Marxist Studies, in order to reflect on the possibilities of choices for women in a patriarchal and capitalist society.