Hello there, and a happy new year to you.
It doesn't take a genius (no offence) to work out that this new post coincides with the new year and all of the procrastination-guilt that is so prevalent at this time of year. Already in my mind this morning I have determined that I will be at least 20 mins early for work every day (already scuppered by a truly awful commute), will run an entire 5km race by September (my third run yesterday ended prematurely when I schlomped nauseated and exhausted into a thicket) and will write at least a short post about every single book I read in 2014. A ridiculous overachieving set of goals which I have no doubt I will fail at but here we go, no more mucking about, book one of 2014: The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood.
If you have never read any Atwood then do, she is a rare breed of author who manages to create a really dynamic reading experience whilst still giving you time and space to think about the things she's writing about. I was shocked to find that she wrote the first draft of The Edible Woman aged 24 such is the skill found in the novel but given the subject matter and main protagonists it makes a lot of sense. The main character, Marian, is in her early to mid-twenties and lives in an apartment with her female friend Ainsley above their disapproving landlady. She has a not-quite-run-of-the-mill job (for a female graduate in '60s Canada) at a market research agency, and a sensible (read dull and traditional) boyfriend, Peter. All is formulaic in Marian's life until she meets English graduate and all-round odd-ball, Duncan, and Ainsley in bohemian fancy determines that she wants a baby, without the need for the man to stick around. Most bizarrely, as Marian's world unravels she finds herself afflicted in a very particular way by finding it harder and harder to eat anything.
At its heart the novel is about the deconstruction of the self, and more specifically, the feminine in the society the characters inhabit. Marian represents the teetering middle-ground of feminine existence- neatly reduced by society to the gap between sexual inexperience and marriage. She similarly finds herself perched ever more precariously between her work friends, otherwise called the 'Office Virgins' for their mutual- although not identically reasoned- no sex before marriage stance, and her old school friend Clara, who is married and mother to 2 and soon after 3 children who have all appeared in exhaustingly quick succession.
The female experience in relation to sex, the not having it in the case of the Office Virgins, or, in the case of Ainsley and Clara, the seemingly inevitable product of it, is at the heart of this novel and yet the book underplays, even coyly removes itself, from the act itself. This surely is deliberate as each woman in the novel appears to be defined by it and yet Atwood treats it as almost a queasy topic, in the same way that food becomes progressively less appetising to Marian. Throughout the novel Atwood cleverly plays on the concept of the femininity being equated to reproduction- and in a society where a woman was expected to give up her job when she got married the equation between marriage and motherhood is absolute. Marian both consciously and subconsciously rejects this, as Atwood emphatically does so. I'll try not to spoil it but at the grand denouement of the intriguing relationship between Marian and Duncan all parties are left unsatisfied. Indeed, satisfaction for Marian comes later and in a more surprising form.
The narrative structure itself flips between first person (Marian) to third person and back to the first again for the very final chapter. In this way, Atwood allows for the disintegration of Marian's character both literally in the structure of the novel as well as in the plot itself, before the emphatic recapturing of self at the end. Marian ends the novel on the ambiguous note, but the optimistic reader will end the novel with Marian's eyes looking up and not back. It is intriguing then that Atwood has asserted that written before the second wave of Feminism of the late '60s, this is not a feminist book. From 2014 it certainly reads like the germination of a new era for women and perhaps therefore it should be read, not as the book that changes perceptions, but the earth into which such seeds can grow in the minds of both women and men (corny, eh? I thought of that one myself). And yet, at some point I will read the novel again with Ainsley at the forefront and probably come to a different conclusion.
In short, this novel is as relevant for a modern audience as it was when it was written and, although driven by the female experience, will appeal to anyone trying to make sense of their life's direction.
