51 pages • 1 hour read
Bessie HeadA Question of Power
Fiction | Novel | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Power and Helplessness
The book’s title establishes that the concept of power is a regular source of conflict in the narrative. Sello provides an explicit answer to the “question of power” toward the end of the novel when he tells Elizabeth, “If the things of the soul are really a question of power, then anyone in possession of power of the spirit could be Lucifer” (199). A forceful spirit (“the things of the soul”) creates power, and so power is often negative. Power creates dominant personalities like Medusa and Dan—Lucifers. However contradictory, Sello also tells Elizabeth that power can be positive: “You were created with ten billion times more power than [Dan]” (199). Elizabeth’s journey coming to terms with her own power and agency is a driving force throughout the novel. Elizabeth alludes to her power before she explains her eventual growth and the conclusion of the narrative when she speaks of herself as a general and spotlights her unique circumstances. Elizabeth asks, “Who had ever had to live, over a period, with awful secrets and a nightmare like that, at once real and unreal?” (145). If Elizabeth wasn’t powerful, she couldn’t “continue the war with hell” (179). Her strength makes the nightmarish journey of self-discovery endurable.
While Elizabeth discovers that she is powerful, she also depicts herself as helpless, particularly in response to the horrible things that happen to her before she finds her agency. She’s the victim of Medusa and Dan. Initially, she can’t counter Medusa’s vagina or thunderbolts, and she can’t defend herself against Dan’s taunts and tyrannical sexuality. She compares the dynamic with Dan to the way the “cat bashes the mouse around, slowly, patiently” (181). Dan is the predatory cat, and Elizabeth is the helpless mouse. Despite their all-consuming force, Elizabeth is easily able to eliminate Medusa when she simply demands that she leave.
Helplessness also coincides with power in Head’s story and doesn’t always oppose it. The irony is that in this story, the powerful are helpless: They’re not free but bonded to their dominant passions. Sexual desire oppresses Dan and Medusa and leaves them helpless. Likewise, the helpless are powerful. Unburdened by the desire to dominate, the supposed helpless possess liberties that the supposed powerless lack.
Elizabeth applies power and helplessness to the external world. Talking to Birgette about apartheid South Africa, Elizabeth says:
[T]he torturers become more hideous day by day. There are no limits to the excesses of evil they indulge in. There’s no end to the darkness and death of the soul. The victim who sits in jail always sees a bit of the sunlight shining through (84).
Like Dan and Medusa, the racist’s “excesses” oppress them and zap their power. The victim of racism, not obliged to advance the suffocating system of prejudice, maintains hope. They have the power of the future. Whether it’s in the external or internal world, Head delivers her point that a person can have power but cannot ethically use it to dominate people or to create hierarchies. Sello and Elizabeth believe that God isn’t above people—he’s a regular person.
Mental Health Versus Self-Discovery
In the book, Head juxtaposes acknowledging physiological and mental health conditions and healing through self-discovery. She doesn’t jettison mental health from the story, but Elizabeth does not engage with those telling her to address her mental health with a professional and to be self-aware of her behaviors. Authorities declare Elizabeth’s mom “insane,” the principal warns child Elizabeth that she could become “insane” like her mom, and Elizabeth wonders if her mom is trying to share her mental health condition with her. As an adult, Elizabeth goes to the hospital multiple times due to supposed mental health conditions. Yet, Elizabeth doesn’t choose the hospital: Authorities send her there, and, on both occasions, she leaves as soon as she is able. Elizabeth doesn’t trust the authorities to help her. Instead, Head uses Elizabeth’s mental health to emphasize the grueling process of self-discovery as a means of remedying her mental state.
The tension between these two concepts suggests that the mental health lens can be reductive or dismissive. In the narrative, what Elizabeth battles cannot be limited to a mental health problem but is instead a spiritual quest. She regularly refers to her tumultuous experience as a journey—she’s on “a strange journey into hell” (12) or a “nightmare soul-journey” (35). The journey is brutal, but it helps Elizabeth learn about herself and the nature of God and Evil. The quest produces knowledge and makes Elizabeth a better person. In the end, even her antagonist, Dan, becomes an ally due to his role in the self-discovery process. About Dan, the narrator says, “He had deepened and intensified all [Elizabeth’s] qualities. He was one of the greatest teachers she’d worked with” (202). By stressing self-discovery over mental health, Head takes the story away from doctors and experts. What makes her “better” is sticking with her difficult but therapeutic internal quest.
Elizabeth’s mental health is less a medical condition and more a symbol of her singularity. Elizabeth tells Eugene, “I don’t care whether people like me or not. I am used to isolation” (56). Elizabeth is separate––her mind works differently, and it produces the nightmare universe of Sello, Medusa, and Dan. At times, Elizabeth tries to run from the intense, vicious atmosphere, but it returns. Elizabeth asks, “How could someone run away from their own mind?” (46). She can’t leave her head, and she’s not supposed to abandon it. The answer to her mental health lies in the quest. By confronting the demonic quest by herself, she proves that she’s a strong, healthy person.
The Internal World Versus the External World
Elizabeth’s mental state and her interior world clash with the external world. Elizabeth describes Motabeng as a place where “the rhythm of its life was slow-paced, like the quiet stirring of cattle” (20). The fiery scenes and people that populate Elizabeth’s internal world contrast with the image of a calm cow. She’s on a hellish journey, but the villagers, aside from some witchcraft, live in relative harmony. Save for Camilla, no one in the external Botswana world is glaringly toxic or upsetting. Due to her inner quest, Elizabeth takes on the role of the disrupter. She snaps at the employee when she tries to buy a radio. She then hits Mrs. Jones and publicly declares the Motabeng Sello a child molester. The external world can’t handle Elizabeth’s outbursts, so they put her in a hospital. Outwitting the external world, Elizabeth always leaves the hospitals, and, however reluctantly, returns to her battle with hell. It’s as if Elizabeth has to complete the war before she can more fully take part in the external world.
While Elizabeth’s internal world adversely impacts her external world, it doesn’t entirely alienate her from Motabeng. She works in the garden and turns it into fruitful endeavor, producing an array of vegetables and Cape Gooseberry. She also befriends Birgette, Kenosi, and Tom. With Tom, Elizabeth details her spiritual quest, indicating that people on the outside, if willing and open-minded, can help Elizabeth with her internal conflicts.
The two worlds don’t always oppose each other, and the external world contributes to the internal world. Elizabeth arguably creates Sello and Dan from two men in the village. Dan brings Mrs. Jones into the internal world by calling her the mother of the nice-time girls. Elizabeth’s traumatic past in South Africa also plays a role in the interior world. In the internal world, she hears a record, “Dog, filth, the Africans will eat you to death. Dog, filth, the Africans will eat you to death” (45). The menacing chant alludes to Elizabeth’s diverse racial identity and the vile racism that she faced in apartheid South Africa. The hellish journey isn’t only about Elizabeth’s personal trauma, but the racism she experienced in South Africa remains a part of the internal world. It’s a specific example of an external power and evil. Part of the goal of the internal world is to learn about the complexities of power and evil.
Related Titles
By Bessie Head
