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

Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 1995 by Emma Parker

Teeth also reveal much about character. The teeth of predatory male characters are given specific emphasis. In The Edible Woman Peter has "teeth gritting" moods (65) and when he takes the photograph of Marion at the party, "his mouth opened in a snarl of teeth" (244). Len Slank's articulation of his philosophy about women, "You've got to hit and run. Get them before they get you and then get out" (66), is accompanied by a dazzling display of teeth. In Bodily Harm Jake has particularly prominent canines and Paul constantly clenches his teeth. Jake, Arthur, and Joe all grind their teeth as they make love. Consummation slides easily into consumption; sexual and physical appetites converge. Conversely, all the characters that the protagonists like have nice teeth.

While the powerful display their power through their teeth, the powerless are toothless. In Bodily Harm the deaf and dumb beggar who chases Rennie wishing to shake her hand has a "gaping jack-o'-lantern mouth" which is "collapsing" because most of his teeth are missing (75). After being brutally beaten up by the police, he has no teeth left at all. Angela Carter argues that, symbolically, this is the condition in which women live:

As a woman, my symbolic value is primarily that of a myth of patience and receptivity, a dumb mouth from which the teeth have been pulled. (5)

Oral communication is another major theme in Atwood's work. Speaking, like eating, is a source of power. Diet and discourse converge in the mouth. Traditionally, women have been suppressed by being denied a voice just as their appetites have been repressed. When Joe tries to rape the narrator in Surfacing she tells him to stop, but he prevents her from speaking with his "teeth against my lips, censoring me" (141). Trapped in the powerless role of victim, the narrator finds oral communication difficult: "I was seeing poorly, translating badly, a dialect problem" (70). In the same way that her identify is molded by a patriarchal image of womanhood, she also finds that her speech is not her own. When Joe proposes, her response is cliched and insincere: "The words were coming out of me like the mechanical words from a talking doll, the kind with the pull tape at the back; the whole speech was unwinding, everything in order, a spool" (81). When Joe asks her if she loves him, she cannot find the words to answer. Because she is powerless, she is speechless. Worrying that she is turning senile, she repeats her name to reassure herself of her own existence. She finds it harder and harder to communicate through verbal language because "the English words seemed imported, foreign" (144). She rejects language as a failed and inadequate form of communication. She also sees language as superfluous, and resolves never to teach her new baby any words. However, when the narrator returns to society she reverts to speech, realizing that "For us it's necessary, the intercession of words" (186). As she rejects her role of victim and assumes a position of responsibility, she regains access to language and acquires the power of speech.