Hayatın Tadı’nda Kadın-Beden İlişkisi
The Relationship Between the Woman and the Body in A Taste of Life

Summary/Abstract: This study illustrates how female experience is shaped and controlled by the formative social norms especially in contemporary western societies by referring to the Body Politics and Eating Disorders in contemporary American writer Sara Paretsky’s story A Taste of Life. While the Body Politics is discussed as a patriarchal social ideology, obesity which is an aspect of Eating Disorders is discussed as a socio-cultural illness. The two female characters of A Taste of Life are epitomized as victims of the ideology of Body Politics and Eating Disorders which is also conditioned by this ideology. Besides these arguments, mass-media and advertisement institutions are mentioned as industries which both nourish the ideology of Body Politics and also shape the social and personal identities of especially women via the images they create. Another subject mentioned within this paper is the concept of motherhood which is discussed from different perspectives. From a feminist perspective, motherhood which is examined both as an institution and an experience is also emphasized with its dimensions of “moral ideal” and “social reality” which in fact contrast with each other. While the mother-daughter relationship of the two woman characters is examined from a psychoanalytical perspective in the story, the confinement of these women within their female-gender roles is studied from a socialist-feminist perspective. At the end of the paper, Eating Disorder of the main character is re-interpreted from an anthropological perspective and she is exemplified as an endocannibal.

• Details
• Contents