What Am I Gonna Do With You Woman?

Facing demons is never easy. Some of us never face what we know is inside of us. We have all either seen or known personally someone who seems to be trying everything they can to stay unconnected from themselves. To really look in the mirror and accept the reflection shining back at you is a horrifying prospect when there are things there that you either don’t want others to know or can’t look at yourself. Maybe you are afraid that others will reject you when they find out just how you really are. Or maybe you are just afraid that the madness will leak out.

In the novel “A Question of Power” by Bessie Head, the protagonist Elizabeth must fight her own demons while at the same time hiding them from the world. She is a broken and terrified human being who thinks she us utterly alone in the world, and so her madness takes the form of two men who are transformations of two local villagers. These men try to give her messages and try to convince her of her divinity; at the same time they tear her down and tell her she is powerless and less than nothing. However, there is one demon that Elizabeth must face that is not a transformation of a real person. That demon goes by the name of Medusa. She does not correspond to any real person in Elizabeth’s life…or at least Elizabeth doesn’t think so.

Medusa has been used as a metaphorical character in many works of literature over the years. Since she was created by the Greeks thousands of years ago, she has fascinated writers and poets with her contradictions. To many she represents the inner strength and fury of woman, the destructive side that some believe women do not possess. The idea that women could turn on their protectors (and persecutors) was frightening to men and even to women in the past. Medusa has lost none of her power to elicit frightening images of writhing snakes for hair and the awful power of gaze over the millennia. She is still just as power today.

In Bessie Head’s novel, Medusa represents many things for many people, including Elizabeth. It is difficult to pick apart all the many nuances that she could be representative of in the story line, so I will take my own shot at what I think I see there.

For Elizabeth, Medusa is the most frightening of her demon visions. It seems that when Medusa enters her dreams and hallucinations, Elizabeth becomes the most intimidated and cannot seem to find a way to even talk back to Medusa. When Medusa first appears to Elizabeth, there is an ominous feel to everything and finally we find that Medusa is capable of “throwing thunderbolts” at Elizabeth’s chest and knocking her out. Obviously, whatever it is that Medusa represents to Elizabeth, she cannot look too closely at it or she becomes unconscious. She seems to stand 10 feet tall and her eyes flash with a fire that threatens to consume everything around and Elizabeth too. This is definitely the one demon that Elizabeth must face down in order to find her sanity again. Why is this female so powerful to Elizabeth? Why is it so frightening for her to face a powerful woman?

Elizabeth has no mother and no country. She has no power and no love in her life. Medusa represents many things in this story, but I feel that she most strongly represents not only the power of femininity, but the mother figure that Elizabeth so badly has missed in her life and also the “mother country” that she has never had.

When Elizabeth lived in South Africa, she was “coloured”—a race, not a human being. She was treated as an animal and grew up feeling as though she was not a real human being worthy of respect or her own power. Medusa plays on Elizabeth’s memories of her past life in South Africa and her loathing of the fact that she is half white like the evil people who tormented and tortured the African people there when she torments her by saying “You see, that what you are like…that’s your people, not African people…you have to die like them!”(Head, p.45)…and “This is my land, these are my people!”(Head, p.38)  Medusa spends a lot of energy playing on Elizabeth’s fears of never being accepted by the people of Botswana, where she lives after fleeing South Africa. But it is more than that…Medusa seems to know also that Elizabeth hates her African blood, and is trying to hide from that fact. When Elizabeth looks in the mirror, she has to look away because of the “unnamable horror there.”(Head, p.46) She admits her own self-loathing when she calls someone else ugly and then says “I’m not saying I’m not ugly myself. I shouldn’t mind if anyone told me I’m ugly because I know it’s true.”(Head, p.48)

Medusa also plays on Elizabeth’s fear of her own inner rage and capability of destruction when she taunts her: “Who’s running the show around here? I am! Who knows everything around here? I do! Who’s wearing the pants in this house? I am!” (Head, p.43)

Elizabeth knows down deep inside that she must be as strong as Medusa in order to survive. But she is afraid to be who she really is. She knows that she must accept her African heritage in order to be fully accepted by the people of her own village. She knows that she must direct her rage in a creative way in order to build herself a life in her new village. And she must learn to love Africa and accept that she is no more able to save it from its evils than she is responsible for them. This motherless, beaten down, frightened girl must become the things she most fears in order to live. For Elizabeth, Medusa represents the power of femininity, of personal power and of true redemption. This demon actually turns out to be an angel. Elizabeth finds that she does not have to fight and conquer this demon; she only needs to really look in that mirror and accept what she sees there. When she stops hiding from herself and others, Elizabeth comes out of the darkness and madness of her mind and learns to love herself and find