Subjugation Of Woman In Margaret Atwood's THE EDIBLE WOMAN

Abstract:-A quest for women's identity has been a key idea of contemporary feminist thought. Feminist literarycriticism exposed a serious clash between the traditional view of the women's role in the society and the way womenperceived themselves. It is this clash that is of particular interest to Margaret Atwood in her novel The EdibleWoman. The heroine of the novel, Marian, is bound by the stereotyped notion of her role in society; she realizes thedeficiencies of this concept and try to defy it. The means of her struggle to find her identity, as well as the differences,shifts and similarities in the description of women's experience in relation to the changes of the social climate arethe main foci of this paper.This research paper designs to show the specifics of women's experience in Margaret Atwood's novel TheEdible Woman, analyzing the strategies the woman character employ in her quest for identity. After theidentification of the mechanisms that coerce women to conform to the stereotyped image of an ideal andspecification of the conflict between the social conception of an ideal woman and self-perception of the heroines, thework will concentrate on the similarities, differences and effectiveness of the identity seeking strategies with specialemphasis on the social changes between the publication of both novels.