Western culture as a whole promotes ideas related to dualism and individuals are provided with the feeling that it is essential for them to see society as an idea promoting two sides. People are thus taught that it would be impossible and harmful for them to concentrate on removing society's tendency to categorize them.

Even with the fact that Ainsley and Duncan manage to step away from the boundaries of their condition, one can feel the frustration that Marian puts across as she struggles to behave as socially acceptable as possible. She is initially a typical woman in a modern society, she has normal needs and she is consumerist. However, as her relationship with Peter advances it becomes obvious that she has trouble accepting the position she is in and that she compensates for her pain by taking on attitudes that mask her suffering. Food is a means for her to act as if there is nothing wrong with her feeling that society is turning her into a slave.

Marian goes as far as to use anthropomorphism with the purpose of emphasizing her feelings. She thinks about her stake as "part of a real cow that once moved and ate and was killed, knocked on the head as it stood in a queue like someone waiting for a streetcar." This serves to prove that

Marian's personal definition of the self is very different from the one imposed on her by the social order. This is...

The protagonist has an ideal life up until the point when she realizes that Peter is a person who concentrates on following socially acceptable attitudes in order to be able to integrate society normally. She thus comes to revolt and protest through exhibiting an eating disorder. The eating disorder is actually a metaphor that Atwood uses in an attempt to have her readers gain a more complex understanding of Marian's feeling as she tries to accept life's course. It is practically as if Marian uses her body as a means to express her sentiments with regard to society's pressures.
Marian's eating disorder is an intriguing attempt from Atwood to enable readers to understand the suffering a person can go through as he or she tries to behave 'normally'. The writer is apparently interested in showing that 'normality' has come to be a divisive idea and that trying to induce 'normal' thoughts into the minds of some persons can be extremely harmful for these individuals. In Marian's case, the protagonist eventually triumphed in preserving her thinking and the fact that she repulsed Peter as a result of her behavior demonstrates that she was able to identify the tools she could use in order to have other members of the social order accept her position.