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Susan Swan’s 1983 novel The Biggest Modern Woman of the World

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The Biggest Modern Woman of the World

Susan Swan’s 1983 novel The Biggest Modern Woman of the World is a fictional autobiography of nineteenth century Maritime giantess, Anna Swan. The novel is divided into four chronological sections, each of which questions, either implicitly or explicitly, gender and national relations during the Victorian era. Like its narrator, the novel is obsessed with bodies—and with ingestions and expulsions. Whether a doctor is trying to take Anna’s measurements or midgets are drinking growth potions, nearly every page features an anatomical concern. In one memorable scene, P.T. Barnum’s curiosities gather for an eating contest at Delmonico’s, “a popular French restaurant at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street” in New York City (76). After having “inhaled [nineteen] puddings like air,” Anna loses the contest to a “normal” because her corset is too tight (77). This scene exemplifies the specificity of her embodied experiences as both an individual of incomparable size and as a woman who remains subject to Victorian mores and conventions. Here, the quantity that Anna eats—too much for a woman but too little for a giant—directly relates to her competing vectors of identity.

Swan, Susan. The Biggest Modern Woman of the World: A Novel. Toronto, Canada: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983. Print.

Written by: Valerie Silva

Valerie Silva is currently in her final year of the Master’s program at McGill University, where she studies contemporary Canadian literature. Her current research focuses on affect, objects, and the body in contemporary Canadian life writing.

It’s Not Me, It’s the Food: The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood


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Marian MacAlpin is a normal 26-year-old working woman who, for reasons she doesn’t quite understand, begins to lose her appetite. Initially Marian believes that her distaste for food only encompassesEdible meat, but the aversion progresses so far that eventually she is unable to consume anything at all. Feeling a loss of control over herself and her life, Marian’s mind unconsciously controls the only thing it can: her diet. The novel focuses on the physical manifestations of psychological distress as Marian spirals into a state of personal disassociation made clear by the shift from first person to third person narration in the second part of the novel. The Edible Woman is an appetizing read, which portrays and evokes a sense of hunger for self-identity, self-control, and self-creation. The novel’s title refers to Marian herself, and to the novel’s surprising conclusion, which I won’t spoil for you.

Atwood, Margaret. The Edible Woman. 1969. Toronto, Canada: McClelland & Stewart, 2010. Print.

Written By: Teia Giacomello

Teia Giacomello is in her final semester of her English degree at Kwantlen Polytechnic University; she plans to study Canadian literature at the Masters level.

Life is About Losing Everything by Lynn Crosbie

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“Every book is about cancer or dieting,” the narrator of Life is About Losing Everything observes while perusing a bookshop (180). Crosbie’s text fits into the latter camp, featuring a protagonist whose aging body has fattened and fails her—despite her many forays into dieting à la Jenny Craig. Part memoir, part fiction, part poetry, part prose, Life is About Losing Everything is written as a series of vignettes that document a painful seven-year period in the life of a middle-aged woman with a fraught relationship with food, alcohol and drugs, and sex—with nourishment of all kinds. What is told is a non-continuous, fluid spectrum of feeling, of physical touch, and a body hungry for it.

Crosbie, Lynn. Life Is about Losing Everything. Toronto: Anansi, 2012. Print.

Written by: Valerie Silva

Valerie Silva is currently in her final year of the Master’s program at McGill University, where she studies contemporary Canadian literature. Her current research focuses on affect, objects, and the body in contemporary Canadian life writing.

Depression-Era Meals: Sinclair Ross’ “The Painted Door”

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“The Painted Door” by Sinclair Ross is a short story that focuses on the stressful lives of farmers during the 1930s when the Great Depression was at its peak. Living in isolation, John and his wife Ann have trouble communicating with one another, eventually leading to Ann cheating on her husband with their neighbour, Steven. Tension and miscommunication are apparent as Ann desperately tries to explain to her husband why she needs him to stay with her rather than leave to check on his father during the blizzard. However, John is so preoccupied that he does not really understand Ann’s desperation. “Plenty to eat… what more could a woman ask for?” (Ross 112). Tragically, by the story’s end, he will come to understand what more a woman might want and need.

Although food is not a major topic in this short story, it still plays a role in demonstrating the isolation and misery of farmers and their wives during the Great Depression. Ann’s main concern is her feeling of isolation, even during mealtime, the only time of the day that she and John sit together: “When he sat down to a meal he hurried his food and pushed his chair away again, from habit, from sheer work-instinct…” (118). Food is a necessity. Farmers work so hard to produce it, they risk sustaining their wives physically but not emotionally.

Ross, Sinclair. “The Painted Door.” The Lamp at Noon and Other Stories. 1968. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2010. 111-135. Print.

Written By: Sara Hassoun

Sara Hassoun is majoring in English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Following the completion of her B.A., Hassoun plans to become a teacher and looks forward to teaching students  to be critical thinkers and seeing the applications of literature in their daily lives.