A Question of Power

Bessie Head is the author of A Question of Power, a novel first published in 1974. Head was born in apartheid South Africa and has much in common with the main character, Elizabeth. While the novel is told in the third-person limited point of view following Elizabeth’s perspective, the story is considered semi-autobiographical fiction. As Elizabeth battles her mental health and the nature of good and evil, she goes on a nightmarish journey of self-discovery after leaving apartheid South Africa. Now living in Botswana, Elizabeth copes with her past and present, alternating between fragmented episodes of delusion and reality. Head uses surrealism and elements of magical realism to bring this complex narrative to life, creating a story that is intentionally disorienting and discomforting for the reader. The book additionally incorporates themes of Power and Helplessness and The Internal World Versus the External World, using the character of Elizabeth to address issues of racism and trauma.

The page numbers in this guide refer to the 1974 Heinemann edition of the novel freely available on Internet Archive.

Content Warning: The book features anti-Black racism, anti-gay representations, child abuse, sexual abuse, suicide ideation, and psychological trauma.

Plot Summary

Elizabeth begins the narrative in her present home of Botswana. She considers her life prior to this, recalling her hellish spiritual journey and the relationships that remain with characters Sello and Dan because of their shared experiences. Flashing back, Elizabeth reveals her story leading up to the present day.

Elizabeth is born in apartheid South Africa where brutal laws separate white people from Black people. Elizabeth’s mom is white, and her dad is a Black “stable boy.” To punish her white mom for having sex with a Black person, authorities declare Elizabeth’s mother “insane” and put her in a mental health hospital, where she dies by suicide. A couple then cares for Elizabeth, but her foster dad dies, and her foster mom struggles to make ends meet. Her foster mom ultimately gives Elizabeth to a mission school where she’s abused.

Elizabeth grows up, becomes a primary school teacher, and marries a “gangster,” as she describes him. They have a son, and her husband is later revealed to be a sexual predator. Elizabeth and her son leave him and move to a village, Motabeng, in a neighboring country, Botswana, which doesn’t have apartheid or similar racist societal regulations.

One night, Elizabeth senses a presence in her room, and she sees a man in a white robe named Sello. There’s also a version of Sello in Motabeng, but she understands that this Sello is different and is representative of something supernatural. Sello claims to be there to teach Elizabeth about power and evil, introducing her to an array of disquieting images and people over many nights. A despotic woman, Medusa, is part of his subconscious and takes form at night alongside Sello. Medusa abuses Elizabeth with thunderbolts. Medusa also taunts Elizabeth with her vagina, described as sensuous, making a comparison to Elizabeth’s body and mocking her.

Elizabeth’s mental health is unstable as she deals with not only her past trauma in South Africa but also her increasingly prevalent delusions. She fears Medusa and cannot decipher what is real and what isn’t, thinking she may be dying. She goes to buy a radio with her son in tow, and she snaps at an employee before beginning to experience panic and disorientation, “heaving mentally in a crescendo of torture” (51). An ambulance takes her to the hospital. When she wakes up, the doctor simply asks her what is wrong and allows her to stay until she feels better.

At the hospital, she meets the stoic Eugene, the principal of the Motabeng Secondary School (a better-funded school than the one where she is employed), who helped bring her to the hospital and stayed with her son while she was unconscious. Eugene is understanding of her “nervous breakdown,” but does not wish to hear any details when Elizabeth attempts to confide in him. Eugene and his wife agree to look after Elizabeth’s son until she leaves the hospital. When Elizabeth is discharged, she meets up with them.

Eugene, offering to help, puts Elizabeth in touch with Europeans running farm projects and teaching villagers how to cultivate the land. Shortly after this connection is made, the school board requests a certificate confirming Elizabeth’s “sanity” in order for her to continue being employed as a teacher. Elizabeth quits her job and becomes a vegetable gardener. There, she meets Kenosi, who works with Elizabeth and becomes a good friend. Elizabeth gets along so well with Kenosi that she thinks that if she were a man, she’d marry her.

In the background of the major events of Elizabeth’s life, Medusa still assaults her and haunts her, and Sello still speaks to her. Fed up with Medusa, Elizabeth tells Sello to get rid of her, and he does. He then shows Elizabeth a cesspit: It was once full of excrement, but now it’s empty, and dead bodies fall into it. Elizabeth doesn’t want to make dead worlds, only new ones.

In Medusa’s absence, Dan enters Elizabeth’s world—there’s also probably a Dan in Motabeng—and he has the ambitions of a tyrant. He’s abusive and hypersexual, and he “possesses” 71 sex workers whom he refers to as his “harem” or “nice-time girls.” The sex workers have names like Miss Wriggly-Bottom and Miss Sewing-Machine, they have sex with Dan on Elizabeth’s bed, and they wear her clothes. This version of Dan appears to exist only in her mind.

Sello is still around, but Dan is in charge. He puts a brown-suited replica of Sello in a coffin and drapes a white sheet over him. The men call each other gay and accuse one another of having sex with anything on earth. Dan says Sello is a child molester, and he says Mrs. Jones (an older English woman who volunteers in the village) is the mother of the sex workers. One night, Elizabeth runs into Mrs. Jones, and Elizabeth hits her. In the morning, she posts a note on the post office wall stating that Sello is a child molester. Botswana police arrive at her house and take her to the hospital.

Elizabeth ends up at a psychiatric hospital, and Tom, an American volunteer who works in the garden with Elizabeth, tries to visit her. Elizabeth refuses to see him because though they are friends, they don’t agree on politics. Tom likes the Black Panthers, but Elizabeth links their militaristic aesthetic to Nazism. She humors a paranoid, racist doctor at the psychiatric hospital to protect herself. Tom stops by her house, the two reconcile, and Elizabeth tells her about her hellish journey of self-discovery.

While making porridge for her son, Elizabeth feels the tumult vanish. Drenched in light, Sello walks toward Elizabeth. Disgusted, Dan leaves. Sello tells Elizabeth that Dan is Satan, and he created him so he could study “absolute evil,” and she could learn from it. Elizabeth has 10 billion times more power than Dan, but he won’t show her the power in her soul because a person with such a powerful soul could possibly become Satan. Elizabeth wants to be ordinary—her God isn’t above but resides in average people.