“The Surface on Which You Work”: Self-Alienation and the Culture of Narcissism in The Edible Woman

ABSTRACT:Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman traces the increasing self-alienation and inability to eat of the protagonist, Marian. Her identity as a young, single working woman is contextualized in 1960s Toronto, a culture marked by competitive individualism where consumption itself is a way of life, per Christopher Lasch. I argue Marian regains agency by reading through and empathizing with the material realities of commodities, ultimately recognizing her own position as a commodity unwilling to be consumed.