From Beth’s first foray into the world of chess, she feels like an outsider. Chess tournaments are dominated by older players, almost all of whom are male, and the teenage Beth often expresses that she feels “powerless and silly” there, like a “child peering into an adult world.” The male players often underestimate her or insult her intelligence, and even the news reporting on her is laden with sexism. This threatens to throw Beth off, as her sense of not belonging sometimes undercuts her ability to play the men, even though she knows that she is a skilled chess player. This illustrates how discrimination’s edge is two-fold: not only does Beth face external obstacles that systematically undervalue and discount her, but it also causes internal doubts that undermine her success even further.
As Beth is first learning how to play chess and entering her first tournaments, she faces discrimination that nearly derails her chess career. Beth faces sexism from the first moments she expresses interest in chess. When she asks Mr. Shaibel, the orphanage janitor, to teach her how to play when she is eight years old, he replies, “Girls don’t play chess.” Fortunately, Beth persists in asking him to teach her, but Mr. Shaibel’s sexist statement highlights that if Beth had listened to him, or if he continued to refuse to let her play, she would never have gone on to her successful career. Similarly, at Beth’s first tournament—the Kentucky State Championship—the young men who register Beth try to put her in the Beginner’s section. She insists that she’s not a beginner, and they tell her that they don’t have “a woman’s section.” Beth goes on to win the entire tournament, but she would not have gained the same exposure, reputation, or prize money if she had not insisted on competing in the regular section. This illustrates how misogyny can undermine and devalue women, limiting their opportunities. Beth also recognizes how the tournament directors are able to further undercut the women who play. There are only four women at the tournament, and the directors make them all play each other to begin—guaranteeing that fewer of them make it further in the Kentucky State Championship. The unfair bias they face in the tournament thus disadvantages the women who do play.
Beth doesn’t only face discrimination from players and the tournaments as institutions; the news reporting on her games reinforces the discrimination she faces. After Beth wins the Kentucky State Championship, a local newspaper runs a story about her. They quote Harry Beltik, whom she defeats, in saying that she shows “a mastery of the game unequaled by any female.” This not only devalues the skill of other female players, but it also reinforces sexism against Beth because she beat all of the male players at the tournament as well—a remarkable achievement for any player, not just a female one. When Beth does an interview with Life magazine, the woman interviewing her asks more about how “frightening” it is to play alongside “all those men” and whether she has a boyfriend. Beth is frustrated, lamenting when the story comes out that it’s mostly about her “being a girl,” showing how the news focuses more on how remarkable she is for a girl rather than talking about her actual achievements. Beth feels this bias a final time when a piece of her in Newsweek comes out, calling her “the most talented woman since Vera Menchik.” Beth thinks, “what did being women have to do with it? She was better than any male player in America.” By focusing on Beth’s being a woman, the article undermines her value and simply highlights the ways in which Beth doesn’t belong rather than illustrating her dominance in her field.
The discrimination that Beth faces from other players and the media then prompts Beth’s internal doubts, which only further shake her confidence and her playing. In Mexico City, when Beth is playing the World Champion Vasily Borgov for the first time, she sees him beforehand talking with other male players. Meanwhile, Beth feels like her clothes don’t fit and that she is “embarrassed” and “awkward.” As she plays, she feels her loss is “inevitable,” and that she is “like a child trying to outsmart an adult.” This idea, that she doesn’t belong, that she is a young girl in a man’s world, only gives her the feeling that she is meant to lose—and this lack of confidence then contributes to that loss. When she goes to Moscow, even after doing months of preparation and having won the U.S. Championship, Beth still feels like she does not belong in the world of competitive chess. She thinks, “She could hardly have felt more out of place. Every time she glanced at the men around her, they smiled faintly. She felt like a child at an adult social function.” Even when she plays Borgov, she feels “like a little girl.” Though Beth knows she belongs there, her status as a young woman inherently unsettles her, affirming how discrimination causes doubts that undermine her playing, nearly creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that she doesn’t belong.
The book’s conclusion is symbolic as it shows how Beth has gained a new sense of belonging and overcome the obstacles that have been put in her path. After winning against Borgov in Moscow, Beth walks to a park where older Russian men are playing chess. The first time she visited the park, she felt nervous and out of place even though she is an accomplished player. But now, having beaten Borgov, she recognizes that she does belong; she sits down commandingly opposite a man and asks in Russian if he wants to play chess. This illustrates how despite being devalued and undermined—even by her own self-doubt—Beth has gained the confidence to feel at home at a chess board in any setting.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Discrimination and Belonging ThemeTracker
Discrimination and Belonging Quotes in The Queen’s Gambit
After a minute a bell rang and there were the sounds of footsteps and some shouts in the hallway, and students began to come in. They were mostly boys. Big boys, as big as men; this was senior high. They wore sweaters and slouched with their hands in their pockets. Beth wondered for a moment where she was supposed to sit. But she couldn’t sit if she was going to play them all at once; she would have to walk from board to board to make the moves. “Hey, Allan. Watch out!” one boy shouted to another, jerking his thumb toward Beth. Abruptly she saw herself as a small unimportant person—a plain, brown-haired orphan girl in dull institutional clothes. She was half the size of these easy, insolent students with their loud voices and bright sweaters. She felt powerless and silly. But then she looked at the boards again, with the pieces set in the familiar pattern, and the unpleasant feelings lessened. She might be out of place in this public high school, but she was not out of place with those twelve chessboards.
“We have a clock-sharing system,” he said. “If your opponent doesn’t have one, come back to the desk. Play starts in twenty minutes. What’s your rating?”
“I don’t have a rating.”
“Have you ever played in a tournament before?”
“No.”
The man pointed to Beth’s money. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m sure.”
“We don’t have a woman’s section,” he said.
She just stared at him.
“I’ll put you in Beginners,” he said.
“No,” Beth said, “I’m not a beginner.”
LOCAL PRODIGY TAKES CHESS TOURNEY. Under this, in smaller letters, boldface: TWELVE-YEAR-OLD ASTONISHES EXPERTS. She remembered the man taking her picture before they gave her the trophy and the check. She had told him she was thirteen.
Beth bent over, reading the paper:
The world of Kentucky Chess was astonished this weekend by the playing of a local girl, who triumphed over hardened players to win the Kentucky State Championship. Elizabeth Harmon, a seventh-grade student at Fairfield Junior, showed “a mastery of the game unequaled by any female” according to Harry Beltik, whom Miss Harmon defeated for the state crown.
“How does it feel? Being a girl among all those men?”
“I don’t mind it.”
“Isn’t it frightening?” They were sitting facing each other. Miss Balke leaned forward, looking intently at Beth.
Beth shook her head. The photographer came over to the sofa and began taking readings with a meter.
“When I was a girl,” the reporter said, “I was never allowed to be competitive. I used to play with dolls.”
The photographer backed off and began to study Beth through his camera. She remembered the doll Mr. Ganz had given her.
Now she crossed the ballroom’s red carpet and went to the ladies’ room and washed her face again. She dried carefully with paper towels and combed her hair, watching herself in the big mirror. Her movements seemed forced, and her body looked impossibly frail. The expensive blouse and skirt did not fit right. Her fear was as sharp as a toothache.
As she came down the hallway, she saw him. He was standing there solidly with two men she did not recognize. All of them wore dark suits. They were close together, talking softly, confidentially. She lowered her eyes and walked past them into the small room. Some men were waiting there with cameras. Reporters. She slipped behind the black pieces at Board One.
The piece said she was the most talented woman since Vera Menchik. Beth, reading it half-drunk, was annoyed at the space given to Menchik, going on about her death in a 1944 bombing in London before pointing out that Beth was the better player. And what did being women have to do with it? She was better than any male player in America. She remembered the Life interviewer and the questions about her being a woman in a man’s world. To hell with her; it wouldn’t be a man’s world when she finished with it.
At one table where the position looked interesting, she stopped for a moment. It was the Richter-Rauzer, from the Sicilian. She had written a small piece on it for Chess Review a few years before, when she was sixteen. The men were playing it right, and Black had a slight variation in his pawns that she had never seen before, but it was clearly sound. It was good chess. First-class chess, being played by two old men in cheap working clothes. The man playing White moved his king’s bishop, looked up at her and scowled. For a moment she felt powerfully self-conscious among all these old Russian men with her nylons and pale-blue skirt and gray cashmere sweater, her hair cut and shaped in the proper way for a young American girl, her feet in pumps that probably cost as much money as these men used to earn in a month.
No matter how often she told herself she was as good as any of them, she felt with dismay that those men with their heavy black shoes knew something she did not know and never would know. She tried to concentrate on her own career, her quick rise to the top of American chess and beyond it, the way she had become a more powerful player than Benny Watts, the way she had beaten Laev without a moment of doubt in her moves, the way that, even as a child, she had found an error in the play of the great Morphy. But all of it was meaningless and trivial beside her glimpse into the establishment of Russian chess, into the room where the men conferred in deep voices and studied the board with an assurance that seemed wholly beyond her.
The applause began. She took the black king in her hand and turned to face the auditorium, letting the whole massive weight of the ovation wash over her. People in the audience were standing, applauding louder and louder. She received it with her whole body, feeling her cheeks redden with it and then go hot and wet as the thunderous sound washed away thought.
And then Vasily Borgov was standing beside her, and a moment later to her complete astonishment he had his arms spread and then was embracing her, hugging her to him warmly.
