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Throughout The Edible Woman, eggs represent various characters’ anxieties about childbirth. When the narrative begins, Marian makes herself a soft-boiled egg every morning, symbolically suggesting in this ritualized repetition that child-bearing is a similarly routine, inescapable path for women. After Marian comes into close contact with her friends Clara and Ainsley’s pregnancies, however, she starts to find eggs less appetizing and more revolting. First, Len Slank reacts to news of Ainsley’s pregnancy with a horrifying egg-themed story from his childhood: his mother served him eggs for breakfast, and “there was a little chicken inside of it, it wasn’t born yet […] there was a little beak and claws and everything.” By linking Ainsley’s pregnant stomach to this tale of the “little chicken,” Len reframes eggs (and the gestation they represent, in the novel and elsewhere) as violent and grotesque. From then on, Marian cannot eat eggs at all, feeling nauseous as the yellow yolks spill onto plates and bowls. Instead of embracing these symbols of fertility, Marian begins to dread them, much as she finds herself horrified by Clara’s out-of-control pregnant belly or Ainsley’s sudden, pregnancy-driven desperation for a husband.
However, after Marian leaves her own engagement party and confesses her sense of crisis to her lover Duncan, she decides to reclaim eggs for herself, baking them into the woman-shaped cake that gives the novel its title. In turning eggs into a different kind of creative symbol—using them to make edible art instead of to signify the gestation of human life—Marian regains some of her own sense of agency, rejecting childbirth (at least in the near term) in favor of a beautiful and “delicious” cake.
Eggs Quotes in The Edible Woman
The The Edible Woman quotes below all refer to the symbol of Eggs. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 6 Quotes
The alarm clock startled me out of a dream in which I had looked down and seen my feet beginning to dissolve, like melting jelly, and had put on a pair of rubber boots just in time only to find that the ends of my fingers were turning transparent. I had started towards the mirror to see what was happening to my face, but at that point I woke up. I don't usually remember my dreams.
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After her unsettling conversation with Ainsley about childbirth (and before a long weekend spent conducting questionnaires for Seymour Surveys), Marian has this strange, foreboding dream. Marian’s image of herself “dissolv[ing]” speaks to the sense, so prevalent in the novel, that the professional and domestic expectations placed on young women often subsumed their personal identities; Marian’s inability to see herself in the mirror suggests a similar loss of individuality, as symbolized by Marian’s inability to access the image of “what was happening” to her own face. Importantly, this passage also cements the narrative’s connection between Marian’s internal, emotional confusion and her Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eu
Chapter 18 Quotes
“She made me do it,” he muttered. “My own mother. We were having eggs for breakfast and I opened mine and there was, I swear there was a little chicken inside it, it wasn't born yet, I didn't want to touch it but she didn't see, she didn't see what was really there, she said Don't be silly, it looks like an ordinary egg but it wasn't it wasn't and she made me eat it. And I know, I know there was a little beak and little claws and everything…” He shuddered violently. “Horrible. Horrible, I can't stand it.”
[… When Marian] opened her soft-boiled egg and saw the yolk looking up at her with its one significant and accusing yellow eye, she found her mouth closing together like a frightened sea-anemone. It's living; it's alive, the muscles in her throat said, and tightened.
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After Len learns that Ainsley is pregnant with his child—and that she intentionally planned their entire tryst for this very purpose—he collapses, regressing into childlike panic at this memory of being served an undercooked egg. Eggs are both literally and symbolically associated with birth and gestation; here, Len underlines that connection by also linking eggs to this memory of his mother making him breakfast. But rather than seeing creation and new possibility in this symbolic food, Len only sees violence and ruin; “horrible,” he says as he recalls the half-formed claws, “and she made me eat it.” Len sees pregnancy Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequa
Chapter 30 Quotes
“You look delicious,” she told [the cake]. “Very appetizing. And that’s what will happen to you; that’s what you get for being food.” […]
She went into the kitchen and returned, bearing the platter in front of her, carefully and with reverence, as though she was carrying something sacred in a procession, an icon or the crown on a cushion in a play. She knelt, setting the platter on the coffee table in front of Peter.
“You've been trying to destroy me, haven't you,” she said. “You've been trying to assimilate me. But I've made you a substitute, something you'll like much better. This is what you really wanted all along, isn't it? I'll get you a fork.”
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Having impulsively left Peter’s engagement party to sleep with Duncan in a run-down motel, Marian now returns to her kitchen, reclaiming the space after letting it go to seed. Fascinatingly, as Marian bakes and decorates this woman-shaped cake for Peter, she is able to feel simultaneously like a creative person and like a created, produced thing; her sense of identification with the cake is clear (“that’s what you get for being food,” she tells it, as if she knows firsthand), but her sense of pride in her work is also evident. In other words, by rendering her lack of agency Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a
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Eggs Symbol Timeline in The Edible Woman
The timeline below shows where the symbol Eggs appears in The Edible Woman. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 10
...afternoon. Ainsley is already awake. She lounges in the sun as Marian makes herself an egg. Marian tells Ainsley about her engagement. Though Ainsley makes her disapproval clear, Marian silences her...
(full context)
Chapter 11
...good care of him. For a moment, Marian feels as if Duncan is “an uncooked egg deciding to come out its shell.”
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Chapter 18
In a panic, Len recalls a breakfast from his youth, when his mother served him eggs for breakfast. When Len opened his egg, he was shocked to see a little chicken...
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Chapter 19
...Mrs. Grot is handing out a seemingly endless stream of finger sandwiches: jelly, ham, and egg salad. Marian can only stomach the jelly. All of the women have agreed to bring...
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Chapter 22
...in Alice in Wonderland, investigating Alice’s “phallic identity” when she “becomes a serpent, hostile to eggs.”
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Chapter 29
When the waitress comes, Duncan orders ham and eggs, but Marian cannot stomach even toast or a glass of orange juice. Each time Duncan...
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Chapter 30
At the grocery store, Marian gets all the ingredients for a cake: eggs, flour, lemons, chocolate, food-coloring, everything brand new. Then she returns home, washing the dishes she...
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