There comes a time in every woman's life where she must decide if everything she has done thus far with her life is making her happy. This is no exception for "The Edible Woman's Marian McAlpin, it is as if she has newly woken up to this life that she no longer appreciates, and she finds herself rethinking everything she has come to know. While the reader was left not knowing how happy Marian felt about her decisions, it's hard to not feel liberated. This is the story of a relatively young woman wanting a new start in her life when society told her that she already had everything she could ever need in life, yet she was ready to start over without society telling her what to do.

The character of Marian is much like many woman, dazed and confused on what she wants to do with the rest of her life. Margaret Atwood, the author of "The Edible Woman," similarly describes Marian to "someone who does not know what to do with her life" . Along with not …show more content…
Marian is the bravest character in "The Edible Woman." While her friends continue to fall in the inevitable trap of society, she manages to slip away before things get worse, "probably representative of modern youth, rebelling against the system" (208). Marian should be praised for being brave enough to believe in herself, even when seeing what her friends were doing with their lives at that moment. For example the reader quickly notices that everyone around Marian is getting ready to settle down and 'grow up' just as her roommate is looking to have a baby and her boyfriend wanting to propose explaining, "a man's got to settle down sometime, and I am twenty-six" (92). This allows the reader to believe that Marian is having an identity crisis not knowing what she wants to do with her life, all the while knowing she is not happy with the life she