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

Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 1995 by Emma Parker

Like Rennie in prison, Offred associates food with freedom. One of her memories of the pre-Gilead period is of being able to eat what she liked. Her reluctance to eat the food she is given suggests that she subconsciously realizes she is being controlled by what she eats. Her physical rejection of the food symbolizes her mental and emotional rejection of the tyrannical regime she lives under. As she recites the obligatory Lord's Prayer, she thinks, "I have enough daily bread, so I won't waste time on that. It isn't the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it" (204).

Recognizing that food is a form of power, Offred attempts to assimilate this power for herself. From her shopping expeditions she learns that oranges, which are rare and which Rita desires, are available. However, she chooses to withhold this information and subsequently denies Rita the oranges. Later, at a time that suits her, she decides to reveal the news about the fruit and "hold[s] out this idea to her like an offering" (57). Food gives Offred the power to resist and deny. Similarly, when Moira is tortured to the extent that she can no longer walk, Offred and some other handmaids steal packets of sugar for her. They realize that the sugar itself is useless but because it is an illicit substance it becomes symbolic of rebellion. The sugar represents potential power. The subversive power of food is also symbolized by Offred's butter. Instead of eating the butter she receives with her meal, she saves it and later uses it as a moisturizer, which is an illicit luxury. The food which is intended to control becomes a means of subverting that control. When Serena Joy gives Offred a cigarette, she contemplates eating it. The cigarette, like food, represents power as Offred realizes she could use it to burn the house down, and her desire to eat it thus corresponds with her desire for power. Ironically, when Rita grudgingly allows Offred a match for the cigarette, she tells her, "Don't care if you eat it, or what" (219). The subversive potential of food is similarly recognized in Offred's dreams of receiving a message from Luke. These fantasies focus on food. She wonders whether the note will appear, "under my plate, on the dinner tray? Slipped into my hand as I reach the tokens across the counter in All Flesh?" (116).

The Scrabble scene perhaps best exemplifies how food functions as a metaphor for power. When the Commander instructs Offred to visit him in his study at night, she expects him to ask her to perform some perverted sexual act. What he wants, however, is to play Scrabble. The game is "forbidden," "dangerous," "indecent," "something he can't do with his wife," and hence "desirable" (149). It is a particularly subversive activity for Offred because it centers on words, and reading and writing are illegal for women. Starved of any degree of control in her own life, Offred wants to absorb the power that Scrabble represents. This generates a desire to eat the letters. The control of words and food, both forms of power denied to women, are united in the image of Offred eating the Scrabble letters: