The Power

In my generous sabbatical from updating this blog, I have read The Power by Naomi Alderman twice. I read it for the second time at the end of 2020, after trying (and failing) to finish Alderman's fictional, experimental podcast The Walk. So why am I writing about it now, a year and a half later? Because I overheard someone say recently that if women were in charge, the world would be a more peaceful place. They clearly did not go to an all-girls' school.

I might have agreed with the sentiment, at least partially, before reading The Power. Not because I think that women are innately more peaceful, but because we are raised to be more empathic, to take the feelings of others into account and to try to resolve conflict. Consider the games we play as children. Girls play 'house' and they play with dolls, where they roleplay social situations and how to interact appropriately with others. Boys build things and then destroy them. They play games where they only have to consider themselves and their needs - and how to fulfill their needs.

There are of course exceptions and overlaps: girls may play with their brothers' toys and boys may have enlightened parents who let them play with whatever toys they'd like, even if they're considered 'girly'. Society is also changing, but that simply proves that these divisions existed in the first place.

Another reason I am returning to the novel's ideas is that I have watched seasons 1 and 2 of The Wilds three times in the last month and am eagerly waiting for the third season. Without giving away too much of the plot, the series begins with eight girls shipwrecked (plane-wrecked?) on an uninhabited island. We soon learn that this traumatic experience has been engineered as part of a social experiment to prove that women, because of their society-building skills, are better equipped for leadership.

I admit I scoffed when I heard the reasoning for the experiment and felt tense every time the head of the scientific team appeared on screen. Saying that women are more equipped for something like this is as offensive as saying that men are.

However, what we soon learn and the reason I have watched the series so many times, is that each girl is different. She has had different experiences and she has reacted to them differently, disproving the thesis that women behave inherently one way and men another - and proving my thesis that we are all individuals. I'm addicted to those stories (which is well-established on this blog), which are told so well and acted out so well.

(There's also the realism of the script - apart from the cycling of clothing, so that the girls seem to be wearing a new outfit every episode. The longer the girls are there, the more bedraggled they look. Their skin starts to burn and shed from exposure to the elements, they are dirty most of the time, their clothes have holes in, and their hair becomes either limp or frizzy and unruly, to the point where one of the characters breaks a brush trying to comb it. They aren't able to build elaborate shelters or to find an abundance of food - they often go without for days at a time. They don't try to map out every inch of the island, beyond confirming the island is uninhabited, finding freshwater and trying to find food. They also behave like the children they are, rather than shouldering the challenges like adults - they have tantrums, verbal spats and many passive-aggressive meltdowns.)

The Power goes to the opposite extreme to disprove the thesis that women are 'peaceful' and relationship builders. The novel considers what the world would look like if women were physically more powerful than men. Note: not as powerful as, but more powerful. One day, young women around the world wake up with the ability to shoot electrical jolts from their fingertips. In some women, it's stronger than others: they can main or kill someone with one jolt. This ability spreads to some older women, too, and it can be awoken by encounters with younger women. It can also strengthened with practice.

Predictably, patriarchal society is horrified - heavens forbid that young women assert themselves or fight back when molested or attacked. In the beginning, men and older women (most of whom don't have this freak ability) try to isolate and shame these 'mutants' - until they realise who really has the power in this new age. They also try to protect poor young men much more vociferously than they have ever tried to protect young women (trying to protect the 'virtue' of young women is not the same thing).

The novel, like The Wilds, follows seven main characters, including one young man (a self-styled journalist) and an older politician and mother whose daughter has the power. Many, but not all of the girls have been victimised, ensuring that the reader begins the story with strong empathy for these young women who are finally able to turn the tables on their abusers. Young Allie defends herself against her foster father who is molesting her (with her foster mother's implicit consent). Roxy plans to avenge the brutal death of her mother at the hands of her father's enemies. Tatiana flees her dictator husband to set up a new state where women are free.

But, as they say, power corrupts. It not only corrupts one's actions, but also one's mind. What started as a genuine grievance against specific people spreads until innocent and guilty people are lumped together and so that people who have committed different degrees of violence are given the same punishments. There's no awareness among the women wielding the power that they have now become the abusers or that they are repeating history. They are blinded by their own emotions, like militia in the midst of civil war.

The damage the women inflict on global society outweighs anything that history can offer as a warning, but it almost seems inevitable. The scale of the violence equals the violence that women have experienced throughout (at least recorded) human history and have simply borne. In addition, would some of the retaliations that are described in the book seem so heinous if they were carried out by a man?

There is some sort of gender revolution on the horizon and the seeds have already taken root. I guess we'll have to see what kind of plant it grows into. I'm not sure what plant would adequately represent the future described in The Power - probably something written by Jeff VandenMeer, but that seems like cheating.

The cover of This World is Full of Monsters by Jeff VanderMeer