18 sometimes she lectured in universities and institutions. Now, she is a lecturer in
the graduate creative writing program at Northwestern University.
2.1 Summary of the Memoir
Marya was struggling with anorexia and bulimia in her life. In this memoir, it is also told how Marya began her eating disorders, the progression of her bulimia
and her transition to anorexia. She was dealing with these eating disorders for fourteen years. The memoir began when Marya was still a child that she had
strange eating habits. These strange eating habits were also suffered by her father and mother that influenced Marya’s eating disorders. The diet magazine and
television ads were also influencing her eating disorders. Television ads and diet magazines that offered diet tips taught women how they should look like. It
continually tells women that to be beautiful, a woman should be slim. As a consequence, Marya planned to get as thin as possible since she was nine years
old. She took out her food for the first time when she was in high school. Her desire to get thinner rose when she knew how to purge and binge her
food so she decided to be a bulimic. She wanted to get thinner by making a transition to anorexia. The transition happened when she was at tenth grade in her
boarding school. Her weight was dropping that made her to be hospitalized. This was the first time when she was hospitalized at the Methodist Hospital. When she
got better, she left Methodist Hospital and decided to go to California to live with her step mother. Since Marya lived here, her throwing up habit was back. She was
binging and purging again in her ste p mother’s house. Her bad habits made her
body thinner than when she first entered hospital for treatment. In January, 1991,
19 she was hospitalized again. In February, she left the hospital because her condition
was better and the insurance stopped paying her treatment. After that, her condition was getting worse and worse because her purging and binging habits
continued again and she could not stop that. Finally, Marya was brought to Lowe House, a residential treatment center. All of her activities were controlled by nurse
and she was force-fed. She even thought that it was better if she died and she requested scissors. Here, she found some people with various mental illnesses.
Marya got distressed to be here that she wanted slim body but she was force-fed to get heavy weight. As a result of her fear of facing herself, however, Marya lay
about being molested as a child and sabotaged her own recovery. After Marya left Lowe House, she got heavier but her eating disorder was resurfacing again. Marya
continued her study and took classes at American University. In this university, Marya dropped to her lowest weight of 52 pounds and she became weaker and
weaker. She also was given a week to live by the doctor. Marya wrote her book to tell people how she was struggling with her
eating disorders. By understanding this memoir, we could assume that Marya analyzed her own eating disordered behavior such as purging, binging, counting
calories, etc. Marya thought that there were various influences for people who suffered from eating disorders which were heredity, genetics, personality, culture,
etc. Marya wrote this book to warn people especially woman not to follow her as bulimic and anorexic.
20
CHAPTER III
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This chapter contains the explanation of the theories used to analyze the memoir. The theories will be divided into two parts. The first part will be called as intrinsic
aspect which contains the explanation of formula of eating disorder story. The second part will be called as extrinsic aspect which contains the explanation of
Marxist feminist approach.
3.1 Intrinsic Aspects
