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Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman

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Recommended: Some characteristics of post colonial theory

This paper highlights close proximity with feminism and post colonialism in Atwood’s novel, The Edible Woman. Woman’s colonization, victimization, humiliation and silence disrupt or increase her pace towards survival and freedom. Women as well as countries are displaced and deteriorated incessantly. Weak bodies and fertile lands are raped and conquered. The complicated relation between consumer culture, the health and beauty industry, patriarchy and gender roles is made explicit. Unrealistic expectations imposed on women make her go through an ordeal of self assimilation and self resurrection.
Key words: patriarchy, gender roles, consumer culture, anorexia nervosa, pathological rejection, marginalized.
INTRODUCTION
Novelists such as Mordecai Richler, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Lawrence, Robertson Davies, and Margaret Atwood have permeated in Canadian literature. Their popularity is not confined to …show more content…

But, for Atwood, the search for personal identity is often paralleled by the search for a universal one. She links her protagonist to the modern consumer culture and colonization. Loss, search and revival of identity play a major role in her texts, but, the submitting woman herself traces back her identity, freedom and survival.
The Edible Woman: At a Glance
Marian McAlpin works in a market research firm, writing survey questions and sampling products. She shares an apartment of a house in Toronto with her roommate Ainsley, and has an obnoxious yet sophisticated boyfriend, Peter. She thinks that Peter is the ideal choice to marry, as he is a successful lawyer. On the other hand, Peter also feels that their marriage will aid his career.

One day, Ainsley says she wants to have a baby without getting married. She is looking for a man who does not have any interest in marriage or being a father. Ainsley thinks up a plan so she can experience motherhood without

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Women’s Body The Figuration of the female body is well described in both Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El-Saadawi and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Both novels show that the women bodies are not their own and controlled by others which it turned into an object in order to survive. In this paper, I would like to argue how the objectification of the female bodies in both novels resulted in their oppression and sufferings. Moreover, what is the definition of the figuration of a body to both Offred and Firdaus? And is there a way out to survive this tragedy in both novels?

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In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood demonstrates a quizzical protagonist, Offred, in a dystopian, totalitarian society where fertile women are only a mere vessel for child birth. Every month during Offred’s menstrual cycle her Commander, Fred, and his wife Serena Joy perform detached intercourse while Serena holds Offred’s hands. The handmaids of the Republic of Gilead are not allowed to use their mind for knowledge nor take part in formal society. They are but the vacuous-minded property to their Commanders and their infertile wives. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred discloses the day to day moments and her commicalOffred had once lived in a world where she was her own person with a job and a home with a family of her own but now she lives under unfortunate circumstances that disable her from being a true, soulful human.

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