6. To Conclude: Eggs, Figs and Milk

Women have been linked to food and its preparation for many decades. Women have been historically domesticated, and whether protesting or accepting of their fate, expectations of women in the kitchen remain. This is not inherently oppressive, as ‘for many women, cooking is bound up with nurturing and caring in a way that cleaning and ironing – seen simply as chores with no emotional overtones – are not’ (Cline 67). The process of breast feeding is a significant stage of bonding as the mother can give the child nutrients that cannot be commodified, meaning that the inclusion of milk in a text can connote these emotional connections, or a desire of.

Women can embody food by the notion of consumption; they may feel threatened or in danger of losing their identity through marriage and childbearing, as they feel consumed with pressure from their male counterparts. Women can also have a corporeal association with food by their physical appearance and features, which are recurrently highly sexualised, as female genitalia is often depicted in literature through fruits. The themes of women as edible align with feminist theory, as it is often due to their suppression by men.

Atwood and Lawrence present political issues regarding female sexuality; Atwood, a female writer, has presented the plight of a woman’s refusal to be consumed by the attempted assimilation and reforming of her character by her husband in The Edible Woman. Lawrence, a male writer, has presented women as inappropriately sexually confident for their gender in “Figs”. The graphic descriptions given of the fig in his poem suggest a fetishization of women’s bodies.

Burgess uses foods connoting femininity and motherhood in A Clockwork Orange to comment on the contemporary youth endeavouring to be treated as adults, although their maternal need is unmistakably obvious.

These explored texts all celebrate female visual beauty, autonomy or maternity, however, “Figs” argues that women should be dainty and secretive. This could be due to its publication in 1920’s, meaning the contextual conventions of women will differ in comparison with the 1960’s novels of Atwood and Burgess.