Unveiling Carnism: Patriarchy, Resistance, and the Female Body in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007; trans. 2015) unfolds as a haunting meditation on resistance, embodiment, and ideological violence through the life of Yeong-hye, a South Korean woman who abruptly rejects meat consumption after a series of disturbing dreams. Her choice, dismissed by her family as madness, destabilizes patriarchal and cultural structures that naturalize dominance both over animals and women. This paper reads The Vegetarian through the theoretical lens of carnism, a concept articulated by Melanie Joy to describe the invisible belief system that normalizes meat consumption as natural, normal, and necessary. By situating Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism as an act of defiance against carnism and patriarchy, the study examines how the female body becomes the battleground for ideological control. Drawing also on Carol J. Adams’s The Sexual Politics of Meat, the analysis reveals how food, gender, and power intertwine in cultural narratives of consumption. Ultimately, Yeong-hye’s withdrawal into silence and vegetal being represents a radical redefinition of agency, one that challenges both anthropocentric and patriarchal forms of violence. Keywords: Carnism, Patriarchy, Feminism, Female Body, Ideology, Resistance.