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Chapter 49
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Power, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power and Violence
Corruption
Gender Reversals and Sexism
Stories, History, and Perspective
Religion and Manipulation
Revolution and Social Change
Summary
Analysis
Naomi writes a letter back to Neil: first, she comments that she likes the “contortionist” version of Mother Eve, controlling the actions of others with her power. She also sees what he’s done with the character of Tunde—that there are thousands of men who likely have had similar experiences: misattributions, anonymous works assumed to be female, men helping wives with their work, or simple theft.
Alderman highlights the sexism of history as a whole in another reversal. Just as Tunde and his work fall victim to the matriarchal structure of society, so too have many women’s works been lost, misattributed or stolen over the course of history, and this point brings that idea to the fore.
Themes
Naomi moves on to her questions: she writes that she doesn’t believe that there could have been as many male soldiers as Neil depicts at the start of the book. She cites that in school they were only taught about women making men fight for entertainment, and that readers will have those ideas in mind. She adds that most people think of sexual fetishes when they think of a battalion of men in army fatigues or police uniforms.
The framing device that Alderman uses shows the power of stories and history over the long term. As Naomi describes, because history has focused on female soldiers in their society, and because men are sexualized more than women, it actively alters how Naomi views the true history that Neil describes in his book.
Themes
Naomi also questions the idea that women didn’t have skeins before the Cataclysm. She thinks that it must have been women who provoked the war, not men. She writes that she feels instinctively that a world run by men would be “more kind, more gentle, more loving and naturally nurturing.” She cites evolutionary psychology: men are strong worker homestead-keepers, while women, with babies to protect, are more aggressive and violent.
Alderman calls out the sexism in evolutionary psychology by asserting a complete reversal of the stereotypes that society generally holds: that women have evolved to be more gentle, and men more aggressive. Thus, she demonstrates how people can always find ways to support a prevailing narrative, even if it is not necessarily true.
Themes
Neil writes back, thanking Naomi for taking the time to read his work. He explains that he doesn’t think much of evolutionary psychology as it relates to gender, and it will be up to the reader to decide whether men are naturally more peaceful and nurturing than women. He suggests that peaceful societies tend to allow men to rise to the top because they “place less value on the capacity for violence.”
The irony in Neil’s response also actively combats one of the stereotypes that prompted Alderman to write the book: the belief that a world run by women would be a more peaceful one. Alderman has argued throughout that women are just as susceptible to corruption when they are given the same power as men. Neil argues here that society’s priorities would have to change to place less value on violence in order for equality to emerge.
Themes
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Neil also addresses Naomi’s question concerning the male warriors, writing that they’ve found hundreds of partial or full statues of male soldiers. He also corrects her, saying that history supports the idea that women didn’t have skeins before the Cataclysm. He concludes by saying that the way humans “think about our past informs what we think is possible today.” But he immediately backtracks, worrying that what he’s written isn’t realistic.
Neil explicitly states why history and stories are so important: they can actively change people’s ideas about society’s possibilities. This is a bit of metacommentary as well, as Alderman provides the reader with a clear and well-conceived thought experiment on how society might change (or remain the same) with women controlling the power.
Themes
Naomi again points out the fact that what Neil has written contradicts many history books, which are based on accounts going back thousands of years. Neil counters that all of the books from before the Cataclysm have been recopied hundreds of times, and that for two thousand years, most of the people re-copying books were nuns in convents. He believes that they could have picked works to copy that supported their viewpoints and let the rest “molder into flakes of parchment.” He says that he’s simply trying to figure out what those history books didn’t capture.
Neil provides yet another angle to the argument that history is a tool that is both borne of existing power structures and helps to reinforce them. He notes the importance of the perspective of those who are writing the history books: the nuns would have been under Eve’s control. Alderman emphasizes, therefore, that history is not always reliable. It is often manipulated or codified by those in power, and thus it is important to recognize that there is always a fuller picture.
Themes
Neil affirms that he’s not trying to attack women. Naomi replies saying she knows it’s not an attack. She writes simply that it is hard to see women portrayed as they are in this book. She mentions that they’ve talked about how much “what it means to be a woman” is bound up with strength and not feeling fear or pain. She says she’s been grateful for their honest conversations when she knows that it’s been difficult for him to form relationships with women.
Naomi once again addresses the way that the toxicity and corruption of power hurts even those who hold power, just like the pressure that Jocelyn feels in the novel. It demonstrates that no matter a person’s gender, those in a group associated with power are expected to be powerful and strong, to the point where they try to perform this strength and power in a way that is harmful to others and themselves.
Themes
Neil tells Naomi that she’s “one of the good ones.” But he writes that some of the worst crimes against men were never (in his opinion) perpetrated against women in the time before the cataclysm. Three or four thousand years ago, it was considered normal to cull nine in ten boy babies, and boys are still “curbed” in places today—that can’t have happened to women, he believes. It would have made no evolutionary sense, he says, to abort female babies on a large scale or to alter their reproductive organs.
Neil’s assumptions become immediately ironic to readers, who recognize that these same horrors do still currently happen to women. In several countries, female genital mutilation still occurs, and female children are aborted or given up for adoption far more frequently than male children. It reminds readers that the specific inequality in the book is fictional, but the parallel inequality in society is very real.
Themes
Neil concludes his letter by saying that the world is the way it is now because of power being based on who can be more violent, but that that’s not the way it has to be. He writes, “Gender is a shell game.” A woman is whatever a man is not, and vice versa. But if one looks under the shells, there’s nothing there.
Neil delivers a final reinforcement of the idea that power is based on who can cause the most harm. In this passage, Alderman seems to imply that the solution to inequality is not to give women more power than men, but to stop the divisions between genders and to stop allowing violence to be a main determinant of power.
Themes
Naomi suggests they meet up to discuss together. She assures Neil that she really is behind the book and wants it to reach the widest audience. She has one final suggestion for him: acknowledging his worry that people will only view the book in the context of his gender, and that it will only be considered “male literature,” she wonders if he might consider publishing the book under a woman’s name.
Alderman finishes her novel with a final, ironic reversal in suggesting that Neil should write under a woman’s name. It spurs the realization that this is not the solution to inequality, in literature or otherwise. One should not have to perform as another gender in order to gain an equal footing. Human beings, instead, have to reevaluate biases and power structures on a broad scale in order to create a more equitable society.
Themes
