London

Claire Kohda uses London as both a physical backdrop and symbolic landscape that reflects Lydia's alienation and search for belonging in "Woman, Eating." The city serves as a place of anonymity where Lydia attempts to reinvent herself away from her mother's toxic influence, yet it simultaneously becomes a maze of social and practical obstacles that highlight her otherness. The windowless former chocolate factory that houses the artist studios becomes a perfect metaphor for Lydia's existence—a space that appears to offer shelter and community but remains fundamentally separated from normal human life. London's vastness and diversity initially seem to promise the possibility of blending in, but the city's systems consistently reject her, from the butcher who refuses to sell her pig's blood to the lost luggage at St. Pancras station that erases her human documentation. The urban environment becomes increasingly predatory as the novel progresses, culminating in her...