The Social Power of Literature: How Could a Novel Resist to What is Wrong with a Culture?

Mario Francisco Benvenuto,Rossella Michienzi

doi:10.13189/lls.2013.010209

Abstract

This paper represents an attempt to describe the society of and ideals which lead to the destruction of the body. The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood lends itself well to an exploration of this complex condition. This is particularly true if we consider the fact that Margaret Atwood writes about the female body in terms of the culture that determines it. Atwood's female bodies tell the story of the subjects' experience within a system that seeks to consume them. Susan Bordo finds Foucault's model of self-surveillance useful for the analysis of femininity is reproduced through a process of self-normalization to cultural ideals of the perfect face or the perfect body. According to Susan Bordo anorexia must be defined within a cultural context. Bordo feels that it is through eating disorders that resistance to the dominant ideological system is made known. But at the same time this resistance also destroys the contemporary female body. In conclusion we could claim that body image is strongly influenced by social norms about physical beauty. We will see how the human body is introduced in a mechanism of power with a social basis, that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it.

Highlights

“Il nostro mondo senza letteratura sarebbe impoverito non solo di emozioni – come comunemente si crede – ma anche di conoscenza
We will refer to anorexia, that of Marian, the protagonist of The Edible Woman, a pre-feminist novel written by Margaret Atwood
Foucault and Bordo are absolutely aware of one thing: the body is strongly influenced by the social norms related to the necessity of a form that corresponds to the physical ideal of the perfect face and the perfect body

Summary

Introduction

“Il nostro mondo senza letteratura sarebbe impoverito non solo di emozioni – come comunemente si crede – ma anche di conoscenza. As Paolo Jedlowski 2 points out, departing from the assumption that literature creates, at least partly, the reality that it describes, we will see how it is used as the only tool through which it is possible to create a liberation, give life to a resistance with respect to the dominant ideological system to be subverted. This resistance is expressed in the novel we are considering here, through eating disorders. We will try to understand the paradox that the novel proposes: that of a contemporary female body that is relentlessly destroyed by the resistance / rebellion which should preserve it

The Rejection of the “Norm” in a Novel by Margaret Atwood

Subverting a System through Literature

Conclusion