In this essay I argue for how the character Yeong-Hye in Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian can beread as ‘willful’. I also consider how this willfulness relates to her negotiation of femininity andsexuality, as well as examine the ways in which she can or can not be read as an ‘intelligiblesubject’. I conclude that she can be read as a willful character partly because she persists in hervegetarianism, despite her family’s disapproval. I argue that her vegetarianism could also be readas a hunger strike, which Sara Ahmed (2014) names as one of the most willful acts of all. Inaddition, I conclude that Yeong-Hye repeatedly ‘fails’ to perform an intelligent gender inaccordance with the ‘heterosexual matrix’, termed so by Judith Butler (1990), and therefore I readher femininity as willful. Her negotiation of sexuality I read as willful seeing as she resistsconforming to the dogmas of what Adrienne Rich (1980) calls ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. I alsoargue that Yeong-Hye’s status as a willful subject renders the position of ‘intelligible subject’unattainable for her.