You are what you eat: the politics of eating in the novels of Margaret Atwood

Food and control lie at the heart of Lady Oracle. The first part of the novel focuses on the power struggle between Joan and her mother, and this struggle centers on food. Joan's mother attempts to deny her daughter any sense of autonomy and tries to control her life and identity. She makes her diet and tries to assert her authority physically by reducing her daughter in size. Joan challenges her mother and takes control of her own life through eating. She retaliates against enforced diets by eating more and more:

I was eating steadily, doggedly, stubbornly, anything I could get. The war between myself and my mother was on in earnest; the disputed territory was my body. (69)

Eating empowers Joan, and she eventually vanquishes her mother. Although Joan decides to lose weight when Aunt Lou dies leaving her two thousand dollars on the condition that she do so, she capitulates only because the money will enable her to leave home. Money is a more powerful substitute for food. However, once slim, Joan remains powerless, because she remains trapped in a victim mentality. Like all Atwoodian heroines, she colludes in her victimization by accepting her subordinated status. The absence of power in her life is mirrored by her lack of control around food. Cooking and shopping are activities with which she has little success. Joan lives as she cooks and shops - chaotically. Significantly, she hides her automatic writing (writing over which she has no control) in a folder marked "Recipes." Nevertheless, the moments when Joan does attempt to exert control over her life are always accompanied by acts of eating. Just as she empowers herself through food in relation to her mother, her attempt to take control of her life in Italy is accompanied by an act of eating: "I sat at the white table with my hot cup, adding another white ring to the varnish, eating a package of rusks and trying to organize my life" (25).

In Life Before Man, the relationship between eating and power is demonstrated by the three principal characters. Elizabeth is obsessed with being in control. She is confident of her own identity, independent and autonomous. Her power is symbolized by her hearty eating. However, power based upon the subjection of others (Chris and Nate) is precarious and dangerous. Chris's suicide has already indicated the unbalanced and unwholesome nature of a relationship not based on parity and mutuality. Elizabeth demonstrates that tyranny over others is eventually turned in upon oneself when there is nobody left to dominate and destroy. Her power indeed proves elusive and transient. She eventually loses control of the relationship between Nate and Lesje, which she has been attempting to manipulate to her own ends, and her marriage breaks down completely. Nate moves in with Lesje and he and Elizabeth discuss a divorce. Ultimately, Elizabeth's powerlessness is marked by the absence of food. The penultimate line of the novel reveals "There's nothing in the house for dinner" (317).