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It's as if she is sculpted of whipped cream. She should be on the platter, instead of the fish ..... He occupies himself with undressing and then garnishing Lydia: she should be garlanded with flowers - ivory-coloured, shell pink - and with perhaps a border of hothouse grapes and peaches. (Alias Grace 225)
The metaphoric consumption of women in North American culture is a familiar trope in the works of Margaret Atwood. AUce Palumbo identifies the deconstruction of the "boundary between commodity and commodifier" in Atwood's first three novels (73). Palumbo notes mat Marian MacAlpin, the central character of Atwood's first pubUshed novel, Edible Woman (1972), Uves in a "world where the Unes between consumer and consumed have blurred" (74). In her 1996 novel Alias Grace, Atwood extends this motif, with a twist. Deploying the seemingly universal metaphor that interweaves the desire for food with sexual desire, Atwood places the consuming desires in the imagination of a young medical doctor, Dr. Simon Jordan, whose specialty is "the mind and its workings" (58). Dr. Jordan's perseverate analysis of his own erotic dreams heightens readers' awareness of the hunger filling his body and soul. In women, he sees a banquet of fish, fruit and meat, waiting to be eaten. Atwood plays with cultural clichés such as "forbidden fruit," and "meat" as a sexual reference to women, rendering women a commodity, while imbricating sexuality, violence, death and life in the process. Traps and hooks abound, and Dr. Jordan's diwarted desires substitute for satisfaction.
While hinting at the violence inherent in the imagined feast, the epigraphic quotation above illustrates the ironic humor Atwood deploys to undermine Dr. Jordan's authority and respect. The "whipped cream" reference conveys violence along with thoughts of decadent pleasure. Dr. Jordan perceives the female body as a dish, as a dessert, sweet and fulfilling, good to look at and eat, while he can satisfy his desires and experience a sense of control. The aesthetic flair with which he arranges his "platter" like an artistic chef only heightens the sense of frustration when the female objects of his appetites are, in reality, often not available.
Dr. Jordan is a young doctor who has been hired to retrieve information from Grace Marks about the murders of her...