Sponge

Today's post is based on Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman (1969) in which we see Marian, our protagonist, attempting to define some kind of self-hood in a pre-feminist world. Presented as a figure of infuriating passivity, Marian seems incapable of asserting her own identity and instead becomes a sponge for popular discourses - replicating herself as such at the end of the novel.

The quote which inspired this blog comes from chapter 18 of the novel:

"Hi," she said to Len as he rose, white-faced and out of breath, from the stairwell. He looked ill. "Come on in and sit down." Then, because he was only thirty-six, she asked, "Have you had dinner? Can I get you anything?" She wanted to prepare something for him, if only and bacon-and-tomato sandwich. Ever since her own relation to food had become ambiguous she found she took a perverse delight in watching other people eat." (155, italics my own)

It would seem that through fulfilment of her feminine duty, Marian also consumes the food she provides for others, living vicariously through their experience. She serves merely as a vehicle to the desires of men.

This trope continues throughout the novel as Marian seems to gradually absorb the traits of manufactured femininity, unable to withstand the pressures of society. For Peter, she becomes a blank canvas for his sexual fantasies, wedging her into the bath in a position of male dominance reminiscent of Peter's  pornographic magazines. Yet instead of feeling insulted or degraded by these impositions, Marian embraces this vision of feminine identity, finding it far less distorted than the grotesque reflections which surround her (in the bath taps or the broken mirror). Thus, our protagonist is moulded and shaped into the image of woman, forced into her corset and displayed before an expectant audience, much like the sponge at the end of the novel:

She scooped out part of it and made a head with the section she had taken out. Then she nipped in a waist at the sides. The other half she pulled into strips for the arms and legs. The spongy cake was pliable and, easy to mould. (269)

The identification between the cake and its creator is made clear as she manipulates the porous sponge into an image of hegemonic femininity, performing all of the nips and tucks necessary to create a 'realistic' representation. Yet much like Duncan, our protagonist remains passive and detached throughout, becoming a voyeur to her own experience as she allows herself to be consumed by dominant culture.