9 - Veganism and Disordered Eating

Summary

Introduction

Since its translation into English in 2015, South Korean novelist Han Kang’s The Vegetarian has garnered considerable attention for its exploration of feminism, veganism, and disordered eating. As Amy-Leigh Gray and Dana Medoro note in their contribution to this volume, “The Vegetarian at first represents veganism in terms of relinquishment and withdrawal. The act of giving up meat is quickly followed by Yeong-hye’s desire to strip herself of appetite, relationships, clothing, and existence as a human woman. It seems conventional and straightforward” (187). They then go on to show how the novel is anything but. The novel, originally published as three novellas, tells the story of Yeong-hye who, as a result of a dream, stops eating meat.

The first part of the novel is narrated by Yeong-hye’s unnamed husband; the second and third parts are narrated in the third person but focalized through her brother-in-law and her sister In-hye, respectively. Yeong-hye’s dreams are the only part of the novel narrated in her voice. In her dream, she sees

across the frozen ravine, a red barn-like building. Straw matting flapping limp across the door … a long long bamboo stick strung with great blood-red gashes of meat, blood still dripping down. Try to push past the meat, there’s no end to the meat, and no exit. Blood in my mouth, blood-soaked clothes sucked onto my skin. (Kang 19–20, italics in original)

But no-one in Yeong-hye’s life will allow her not to eat meat. Her husband says, “Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way” (11), noting that her “passive personality … suited [him] down to the ground” (11); after she becomes vegan, he sexually assaults her. At a family dinner during which she refuses to eat meat, Yeong-hye’s father hits her and attempts to force feed her pork while her husband and brother-in-law restrain her. Ultimately, Yeonghye is hospitalized and force fed, but the narrative ends with her sister In-hye demanding that the force-feeding stop. The narrative ends before Yeong-hye’s death, at a point after which she has declared to her sister that she is, in fact, becoming a tree.