The Edible Woman

Marian has been an employee at Seymour Surveys for four months and is therefore required to sign papers to join the company’s pension plan. She goes into a “panic” about providing these signatures as it implies a lifetime of staying in the same office role. In this way, the company’s pension plan symbolizes the novel’s theme of Autonomy and Social Roles. The office virgins advise Marian to simply submit in a traditionally-expected feminine way, and that doing so will eventually lead to Marian accepting her role. When Marian becomes engaged to Peter, she removes herself from the pension plan, yet this retirement forces her to be fully financially dependent upon Peter, losing her autonomy. Therefore, Marian's pension plan, or lack thereof, symbolizes her conflict with finding a balance between her autonomy and her social role as a young woman in Western society.

Mirrors and photography as motifs of captured inner selves is first introduced by Duncan after he smashes his bathroom mirror and claims to prefer his “private” one that is less suspicious of his identity (150). This story significantly influences Marian’s associations of her reflection with an inner self that has been captured in a particular social role, gender role, or appearance.