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.

摘要：对女性身份的探寻始终是当代女性主义思想的核心议题。女性主义文学批评揭示了社会传统女性角色观念与女性自我认知之间存在的严重冲突，而这一冲突正是玛格丽特·阿特伍德（Margaret Atwood）在其小说《可以吃的女人》（The Edible Woman）中尤为关注的核心。小说主人公玛丽安（Marian）被社会对女性角色的刻板印象所束缚，她意识到这一观念的弊端并试图打破这种束缚。本文的主要研究焦点，便是她探寻身份的斗争手段，以及作品中结合社会环境变迁描述女性经历时所呈现出的差异、流变与共通之处。
本研究旨在阐释玛格丽特·阿特伍德《可以吃的女人》中女性经历的具体样貌，并分析主人公在身份探寻过程中所采用的策略。在明确迫使女性顺从理想女性刻板形象的运作机制，并厘清社会对理想女性的认知与主人公自我认知之间的冲突后，本文将重点分析身份探寻策略的共通性、差异性与实施效果，并特别结合两部小说出版时的社会变迁展开论述。