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 literary<br>criticism exposed a serious clash between the traditional view of the women's role in the society and the way women<br>perceived themselves. It is this clash that is of particular interest to Margaret Atwood in her novel The Edible<br>Woman. The heroine of the novel, Marian, is bound by the stereotyped notion of her role in society; she realizes the<br>deficiencies of this concept and try to defy it. The means of her struggle to find her identity, as well as the differences,<br>shifts and similarities in the description of women's experience in relation to the changes of the social climate are<br>the main foci of this paper.<br>This research paper designs to show the specifics of women's experience in Margaret Atwood's novel The<br>Edible Woman, analyzing the strategies the woman character employ in her quest for identity. After the<br>identification of the mechanisms that coerce women to conform to the stereotyped image of an ideal and<br>specification of the conflict between the social conception of an ideal woman and self-perception of the heroines, the<br>work will concentrate on the similarities, differences and effectiveness of the identity seeking strategies with special<br>emphasis on the social changes between the publication of both novels.