Liberation from the patriarchy exists only in speculative fiction. Naomi Alderman indulges in this speculation in The Power, in which women gain the ability to generate extremely powerful electric pulses through a newly discovered organ called a skein. This authority empowers women to infiltrate every aspect of the patriarchal societies in which they live. This biological shift in the power dynamic between men and women becomes a source of control for women and leads to their rise to power, but not necessarily their liberation. In this new world, Alderman reveals the horrors of current world gender relations as power shifts from one oppressor to another in religious institutions, crime rings, and politics. The liberation the women in the novel crave turns harmful as they take over positions that men once held instead of abolishing the systems of hierarchy. This is what sparks an apocalypse.
Liberation means freedom, but The Power urges its reader to ask: freedom from what? Their newfound authority does not free these women, it simply pushes them into positions of power previously held by men. Jessa Crispin argues in Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto, that just because women obtain positions of power does not mean that they are going to change the harmful power structures that oppress all people. She writes, “now that women are raised with access to power, we will not see a more egalitarian world, but the same world, just with more women in it” (Crispin, 57). These women are not liberated in a way where they feel empowered to dismantle harmful patriarchal structures and rebuild a world where women and men co-exist in a utopian society that centers peace and understanding. They instead acclimate to the world that men created by taking over their positions of power and using violent methods to achieve their goals. In the end, they are not truly liberated from anything because they are still confined to the harmful systems that men have created.
As the three female protagonist search for liberation, each of them rebel against the thing that has oppressed her the most in life. Allie forms a revolution around religion after being sexually abused in a religious household. Roxie begins committing crimes after she saw her mother die at the hands of a criminal who was paid to murder her. Margot becomes a ruthless military leader after years of being stepped on by her political higherups.
Margot’s rise to political power is an example of how just because there is a new person in office, there can and still will be violence when the place of power is an inherently oppressive position. She builds an army of young girls and sells their labor to Tatiana, who then uses it to start wars around the globe. In “Day of the Girls: Reading Gender, Power, and Violence in Naomi Alderman’s The Power,” Alyson Miller outlines how this powershift is not particularly liberating to the women of the novel: “The eventual failure of Tatiana to successfully establish a female utopia, however, is arguably an acknowledgement of the inability to merely invert systems of power in the expectation of difference.” This shows that they are still living in a man’s world because they work to uphold the systems of oppression that men created. They do not center growth or change in their revolution, they center violence and colonization which is why the story turns into an apocalyptic narrative.
In her journey to try to reverse the narratives of control, Allie starts a new religious order and changes her name to Mother Eve. Gender plays a decisive role in most major religions when it comes to teachings, traditions, and positions of power. By claiming a place of authority in her own church, Allie shifts the typical male-controlled religious orders. She urges her followers to reject the male divine beings they are accustomed to praying to and instead pray to the woman of their faith traditions for guidance: “Jews: look to Miriam, not Moses, for what you can learn from her. Muslims: look to Fatimah, not Muhammad. Buddhists: remember Tara, the mother of liberation. Christians: pray to Mary for your salvation” (Alderman, 114-115). She subtlety shifts the power from one sex to another, but the institutions and teachings remain intact. In “Religion and Patriarchy: Gendered Inscriptions on Religious Beliefs and Practices” Kochurani Abraham goes into detail on how religion is generally seen as a “constitutive part of the ‘gender order’ in any given society, as it plays a decisive role in shaping women’s lives and in legitimizing their social subordination” (Abraham, 3). Allie does not dismantle anything, just shifts the power so that another group lives in social subordination. Becoming the oppressor in this way can not be read as liberation, because it brings on a whole set of other issues that these women now must deal with.
By attempting to remove themselves from stranglehold of the patriarchy by placing themselves in the positions of power created by the patriarchy, the women in this novel are put into dangerous and life-threatening situations. There does not appear to be any revolution of thought in this novel, just a shift in access to positions of power fueled by access to violence. Power changing hands leads the men to try to hold onto their power by acting more violently towards women. For example, Roxy’s father and brother forcibly remove the skien from her body so that doctors can place the organ inside Darrell’s instead, giving him all the power Roxie once owned. This action totally disregards Roxie’s personal bodily boundaries and leaves her to drag herself through the forest until she finds a cult where she can recover from her injury.
These women reclaimed violent tactics which were used against them for ages. Though achieving justice though violence remains a crucial method through which oppressed people seek justice, it is important to imagine a world where these tactics may fall away, and people of all genders can engage with an order that does not rely upon hierarchy and oppression. However, it is true that violence is a valid form of protest for oppressed peoples. Malcolm X condones violence as a way for marginalized groups to bring about recognition and respect. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, he states, “I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man’s problem just to avoid violence.” (Malcolm X, 373) The oppressed group to which he is referring is black Americans, but this argument is applicable to The Power because, historically, men have systematically oppressed women. The issue with the violence in The Power is that it is not solution-oriented. The violence begins on an interpersonal level and then takes off into organizations and cults where sexual assaults and murders of men of normal and even celebrated. Roxy and Tunde witness mass attacks on men during their time in the camp together. Women rape, kill, and torture men for pleasure. “There is no sense in what is done here this day. There is no territory to be gained, or a particular wrong to be avenged, or even soldiers to be taken… They do it because they can.” The violence spirals out of control and turns apocalyptic because the women acclimate into the harmful practices popularized and upheld by men.
In our contemporary social and political climate, we face a delusion with the current systems of power and empowerment. There are more women of color in congress at this time in the United States than ever before. However, not a finger has been laid upon the structure nor the ethics of our patriarchal society. There are more women CEOs and more women in the workforce than at any point in the history of our country, though everyone still faces the oppression inherent within the gender binary. As long as the hierarchical gender order exists, there will never be justice for women or for men. The Power brings this truth to light. Regardless of who wields the power, someone will always be oppressed. That is why it is crucial to always interrogate power as it exists as a form in and of itself regardless of who happens to be exercising it at any point in history.
The Power introduces a clear dichotomy of tactics. In the reader’s heart, they might know that the way by which the characters are going about their liberation is not truly freeing of themselves or of others. It causes us to ask the question: in becoming the oppressor, what do we lose of our humanity? Oppressed people present a unique viewpoint of the world in that they are able to clearly see the power imbalances that so deeply affect their lives. This makes it easy to desire the occupation of that power, rather than questioning the basis of the power itself. The apocalyptic element in this novel is its cyclical nature—it refers back to our reality, in which there is a stark difference between men and women. What would happen if these positions remain the same, with the only change being in who fills the offices? In the era of commercialized female empowerment, this question is especially crucial to ponder. Are we invested in a future that looks much like our own, with women at the helm, or are we imagining something bigger, something outside of our known patterns? This is the question asked by The Power, one which I hope its readers apply to the current social and cultural environment.
Works Cited
Persisting Patriarchy Intersectionalities, Negotiations, Subversions, by Kochurani Abraham, Springer International Publishing, 2019, p. 143.
Why I Am Not a Feminist: a Feminist Manifesto, by Jessa Crispin, Read How You Want, 2017, p. 57.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by X, Malcolm. Ballantine Books, 2015.
Necromancer Walking 