The Edible Woman (1969)
by
Margaret Atwood
5/10
I used to read a lot of the Virago Press fiction, being a feminist.
I found this book a bit strange - I'm sure that is what Margaret Atwood intended. It is a book about a woman who is struggling with the roles that are expected of a women in the late 1960s. Specifically, she can't work out what her attitudes are towards conventional marriage, with husband as bread-winner, little wifey in the respectable home having respectable babies, playing hostess to respectable, witty, charming friends. In order to gain all this she must give up her work as a market researcher. She doesn't even enjoy this role much.
She converts her ambivalence towards relationships and marriage into a problem with food, and progressively (and literally) cannot stomach more and more types of food. She loses weight, becomes anorexic, although the condition isn't named. She has a bizaree flat-mate, a bizarre lover and some weird work-colleagues.
I do like a book where I can believe in the characters, and like at least one of them, so I struggled with this. BUT, I admire Atwood for this early exploration of the impossibility of woman's position in a world where she is oppressed. Still.
by
Margaret Atwood
5/10
I used to read a lot of the Virago Press fiction, being a feminist.
I found this book a bit strange - I'm sure that is what Margaret Atwood intended. It is a book about a woman who is struggling with the roles that are expected of a women in the late 1960s. Specifically, she can't work out what her attitudes are towards conventional marriage, with husband as bread-winner, little wifey in the respectable home having respectable babies, playing hostess to respectable, witty, charming friends. In order to gain all this she must give up her work as a market researcher. She doesn't even enjoy this role much.
She converts her ambivalence towards relationships and marriage into a problem with food, and progressively (and literally) cannot stomach more and more types of food. She loses weight, becomes anorexic, although the condition isn't named. She has a bizaree flat-mate, a bizarre lover and some weird work-colleagues.
I do like a book where I can believe in the characters, and like at least one of them, so I struggled with this. BUT, I admire Atwood for this early exploration of the impossibility of woman's position in a world where she is oppressed. Still.
No comments:
Post a Comment