Orphaned at eight years old, young Beth Harmon faces many challenges: adjusting to the strict life at the Methuen orphanage, dealing with her adopted mother Mrs. Wheatley’s mental health issues, and ultimately navigating the world of competitive chess and her own addictions. Perhaps most striking about Beth’s character is how self-sufficient she is: opening a bank account at 13 years old with her chess prize money, taking control of her sexuality and pursuing the men around her, or keeping up the house after Mrs. Wheatley dies when Beth is still a teenager. In showing Beth’s quick maturation as she moves through life, the book portrays coming of age as learning to take control of one’s own choices and becoming independent rather than resigning oneself to powerlessness.
Growing up in the Methuen orphanage, Beth frequently feels trapped, and it is this powerlessness that defines her childhood because she does not yet have the ability to take control of her life. At Methuen, Beth must follow rules or else face threats from Methuen’s director, Mrs. Deardorff. She talks about how the taste of the fish she has to eat there nearly gags her, but she has to eat every bite or “Mrs. Deardorff would be told about you and you wouldn’t get adopted.” Beth’s childhood is thus marked by a feeling that she has no control over her life. Beth feels similarly powerless one night when her friend Jolene tries to touch her inappropriately, and guides Beth’s hand to do the same. Beth at first is terrified, futilely protesting until adults come down the hall and Jolene returns to her own bed. This is another example of how Beth feels powerless in her life—as a child, she has little say in what happens to her and lacks ways of protecting herself. When Beth finds herself locked in a room while trying to steal some of the orphanage’s tranquilizers, she feels “trapped, the same wretched, heart-stopping sensation she had felt when she was taken from home and put in this institution.” These thoughts reflect Beth’s feelings of powerlessness, not only in this moment but in her childhood at the orphanage as a whole.
In contrast to Beth’s childhood, Beth’s teenage years are defined by Beth trying to take control of her life path; this is what marks her transition into adulthood. Mr. Wheatley and Mrs. Wheatley adopt Beth when she is 13, and she starts to regain some control of her life, especially by returning to chess after Mrs. Deardorff stopped her from playing. She enters herself into the Kentucky State Championship, and when she wins it, she opens a bank account with her prize money. This is the first symbolic shift indicating that Beth is maturing, as she is taking her life into her own hands. Beth also takes control of her own sexuality. At 17, she attends a college party and flirts with a student named Tim, making it clear she wants to have sex with him. She thinks to herself, “it was about time,” illustrating her desire to actively change her situation, in contrast to her helpless experience with Jolene. In tying her agency to a rite of passage like having sex for the first time, the book shows how Beth’s maturation is marked by taking control of her own life. Beth also does this when she starts drinking heavily—coincidentally, the day after she has sex for the first time. She thinks, “She had made love the night before, and now it was time to learn about being drunk.” Again, Beth is going through different rites of passage of her own volition, and in this way the book illustrates how coming of age is tied to becoming independent.
After Mrs. Wheatley dies and Mr. Wheatley disappears entirely from Beth’s life, Beth becomes entirely responsible for herself, and this newfound independence marks her true coming of age. When Mrs. Wheatley dies in Mexico City, Mr. Wheatley (whom Beth hasn’t seen in years) tells Beth she can keep the house if she continues to make the mortgage payments. Beth buries her mother, deals with lawyers, and eventually buys the house—all while still a teenager. She thinks that after Mrs. Wheatley's death it “had consoled her to know that she could go on living in the house, buying her groceries at the supermarket and going to movies when she wanted to.” These simple gestures illustrate how Beth has come into her own as an adult, essentially taking over the house from her adopted mother and finding greater autonomy. Towards the end of the book, when Beth is in Paris at a chess tournament, she contemplates her future. She realizes that she could be the World Champion in her 20s and live wherever she wanted to live. She thinks, “There was nothing to hold her in Kentucky, in her house; she had possibilities that were endless.” Realizing her own ability to determine her life shows just how much she has grown, coming into her own not only as a chess player but also as a woman. Whereas her childhood was marked by feeling trapped, here she has the world at her fingertips; the book illustrates that has come into adulthood because of her ability to be independent and determine her own future.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Coming of Age ThemeTracker
Coming of Age Quotes in The Queen’s Gambit
He moved the pawn next to his queen’s pawn, the one in front of the bishop. He often did this. “Is that one of those things? Like the Sicilian Defense?” she asked.
“Openings.” He did not look at her; he was watching the board. “Is it?”
He shrugged. “The Queen’s Gambit.”
She felt better. She had learned something more from him. She decided not to take the offered pawn, to leave the tension on the board. She liked it like that. She liked the power of the pieces, exerted along files and diagonals. In the middle of the game, when pieces were everywhere, the forces crisscrossing the board thrilled her. She brought out her king’s knight, feeling its power spread.
In twenty moves she had won both his rooks, and he resigned.
She grew frantic. They would miss her at the movie. Fergussen would be looking for her. The projector would break down and all the children would be sent into the Multi-Purpose Room, with Fergussen monitoring them, and here she would be. But deeper than that, she felt trapped, the same wretched, heart-stopping sensation she had felt when she was taken from home and put in this institution and made to sleep in a ward with twenty strangers and hear noises all night long that were, in a way, as bad as the shouting at home, when Daddy and Mother were there—the shouting from the brightly lit kitchen.
Lying in bed, Beth could hear the distant sound of Mrs. Wheatley coughing and later she heard her bare feet padding down the hallway to the bathroom. But she didn’t mind. Her own door was closed and locked. No one could push it open and let the light fall on her face. Mrs. Wheatley was alone in her own room, and there would be no sounds of talking or quarreling—only music and low synthetic voices from the television set. It would be wonderful to have Jolene there, but then she wouldn’t have the room to herself, wouldn’t be able to lie alone in this huge bed, stretched out in the middle of it, having the cool sheets and now the silence to herself.
The horrible feeling, at the bottom of the anger and fear, was that she was the weaker player—that Benny Watts knew more about chess than she did and could play it better. It was a new feeling for her, and it seemed to bind and restrict her as she had not been bound and restricted since the last time she sat in Mrs. Deardorff’s office.
At noon she put the rest of the eggs in a pot to boil and turned on the hi-fi. She had never really listened to music before, but she listened now. She danced a few steps in the middle of the living room, waiting for the eggs. She would not let herself get sick. She would eat frequently and drink one beer—or one glass of wine—every hour. She had made love the night before, and now it was time to learn about being drunk. She was alone, and she liked it. It was the way she had learned everything important in her life.
“Do you want to play another?”
Benny shrugged and turned away. “Save it for Borgov.” But she could see he would have played her if he had thought he could win. She felt a whole lot better.
They continued as lovers and did not play any more games, except from the books. He went out a few days later for another poker game and came back with two hundred in winnings and they had one of their best times in bed together, with the money beside them on the night table. She was fond of him, but that was all. And by the last week before Paris, she was beginning to feel that he had little left to teach her.
By the time she was in her twenties she could be World’s Champion and live wherever she wanted to live. She could have a pied à terre in Paris and go to concerts and plays, eat lunch every day in a different cafe, and dress like these women who walked by her, so sure of themselves, so smart in their well-made clothes, with their heads high and their hair impeccably cut and combed and shaped. She had something that none of them had, and it could give her a life that anyone might envy. Benny had been right to urge her to play here and then, next summer, in Moscow. There was nothing to hold her in Kentucky, in her house; she had possibilities that were endless.
