“The ‘I’ against an ‘Other’”: Gender Trouble in The Edible Woman

Abstract

The concept of self and body has been discussed since the evolution of Modern philosophy by Descartes. With the ignition of feminism movements, these theories attracted the attention of many critics to revise the truth of gender and identity with relation to body. One of the well-known critics in this realm is Judith Butler, who has given fresh sense to postmodern way of thinking. She believes that body, sex and gender are all mingled into one definition and this is the society which has separated them as different still false notions to preserve its survival through normalizing the heterosexual matrix. Being influenced by the chaotic world of limitations and rules, Margaret Atwood, the acknowledged novelist, wrote her first novel, the Edible Woman including the theme of woman in search of identity and the imprint of social norms on her character. The body and the act of eating in this novel appear symbolically, as they represent different modes of a character in the process of self-recognition. What has been tried to illustrate in this paper, is to show Butlerian instability of body and its inseparability of gender and the traces, back into Atwood's first novel. Through the rejection of established interpretation of gender and body, the characters become involved in the process of change and realization. This is the possibility of change which still attracts many readers to this old work of Atwood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]