美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'The Power,' Women Develop A Weapon That Changes Everything

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

2017 has been bookended by two novels about women and power. As the year began, Margaret Atwood's classic, "The Handmaid's Tale," began making its way to the top of the best-seller lists. It depicts¹ a future where women are stripped of all power. As 2017 draws to a close, another dystopian novel has made it onto some prominent top 10 lists. Naomi Alderman's "The Power" imagines a world where women discover they have a weapon that makes them physically² threatening to men. And that changes everything, as NPR's Lynn Neary reports.

LYNN NEARY, BYLINE³: What if, asked Naomi Alderman. What if teenage girls around the world suddenly discovered they have a scary new power?

NAOMI ALDERMAN: It's some sort of electrical thing which will both hurt you like an electric shock and will also somehow trigger the pain centers in your brain. So it's the power to cause pain by violence.

NEARY: The young women develop this power as they enter puberty. And it comes as a surprise to them. In this excerpt⁴, a character named Roxy uses it for the first time as she is fighting for her life.

ALDERMAN: (Reading) He reaches for her with one hand, the knife in the other. She gets ready to kick him or punch him, but some instinct tells her a new thing. She grabs his wrist. She twists something quite deep inside her chest as if she'd always known how to do it. He tries to wriggle⁵ away, but it's too late. She cuppeth the lightning in her hand. She commandeth it to strike.

NEARY: No one knows how or why this mysterious power emerged, though there are many theories. And all over the world, women begin experimenting with it. They fight their oppressors, whether it be fending⁶ off an attacker or protesting against governments that deprive all women of their rights. Alderman says it was gratifying to imagine these scenarios⁸.

ALDERMAN: If I could go and give to women being sex trafficked right now today in some dirty basement, waiting to be raped¹⁰ - if I could go and give them the power to electrocute people at will, even knowing that this might end badly, I would give it to them.

NEARY: Possessing this new power, says Alderman, not only makes women physically stronger. It also changes the way they think about themselves.

ALDERMAN: If you were able to live your life as if you were able to cause hurt when you needed to, your life would be so different even if you never, ever had to do it. That makes you less afraid all the time.

NEARY: Not surprisingly, men find this new female power threatening. In his first encounter with it a journalist, Tunde, is humiliated¹² after a young woman spurns¹³ his advances with a shock of electricity.

ALDERMAN: (Reading) He wants very much to be distracted and not to be alone. He does not know what has happened, nor is there anyone he could discuss it with. When he imagines asking his friend Charles about it or Isaac, his throat clamps shut. If he said what happened, they would think he was crazy or weak or lying. He thinks of the way she laughed at him.

NEARY: Tunde begins traveling around the world, reporting on the changes that are brought about by the power. As men fight back, it turns out women can be just as ruthless in wielding¹⁴ power. At first, Tunde doesn't understand this.

ALDERMAN: What happens to Tunde, who is a character that I love - I think he is the best, nicest character in the book, actually. He's a really good man trying to make his way in a changing world. He's a journalist. He's very excited by these new changes. He wants to chronicle what's going on. And what happens to him is that he slowly learns - it takes him a while - that he should have been more afraid.

NEARY: Alderman doesn't shy away from depicting¹⁵ women who are abusive and violent. She even imagines a way that women can rape⁹ men, using sex as a weapon just as men do.

ALDERMAN: If, like me, by the end of that book you feel convinced by that moment and you say, oh, yes, I see, this is not about somebody taking some sexual pleasure; this is about the ability to humiliate¹¹ somebody in the most private, revolting, personal way possible, then I think we've learned something important about what rape is. Rape is not the best way to go about getting sex. Actually, it's the best way to go about feeling powerful if you are a sadist.

NEARY: Alderman had some expert guidance as she worked on this novel. Margaret Atwood was her mentor¹⁶. And to Alderman, "The Handmaid's Tale," where men are in total control, is a far more frightening scenario⁷ than her own creation.

ALDERMAN: People say to me, oh, your novel is a dystopia. And I say - and it sounds like a joke, but it's also true - it's only a dystopia for the men. And in my world, nothing happens to a man that is not happening to a woman in the world we live in today. So if we find my world to be a dystopia, then we are already living in a dystopia.

NEARY: Alderman says her book starts out as a story about men and women, but it ends up being more about the nature of power itself. Still, it's a story that resonates in a time when women are taking on men in new and potent¹⁷ ways. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.

(SOUNDBITE OF KELSEY LU SONG, "EMPATHY")