A Question of Power (1974): Bessie Head

Binary oppositions: Good/Bad, Black/White, Young/Old--we use them everyday to make sense of the world and to categorize our
observations. The problem, however, is that when we employ binary oppositions, we most often privilege one side of the opposition over the other. This opens the
door to ethical judgments: White is not just different from black, rather it is better. Take this specific example one step further and you arrive at the foundation of
racist ideology. This idea is not new. If you have encountered any post-structuralist theory (or in fact almost any literary theory written in the last thirty years), the
idea of binary opposition and its damaging power is probably quite familiar. Bessie Head's novel A Question of Power is an exemplary work of deconstructive
fiction that calls into question the binary oppositions of sanity/insanity, good/evil, and native/exile.

Set in the Botswanan village of Montabeng, Head's novel is centered on a young mixed race woman named Elizabeth and her son Shorty who end up in Botswana
after fleeing from racial hatred in South Africa. Elizabeth finds work as a teacher in Montabeng, but is soon fired from her job after being declared "mentally
unstable." In order to support herself and her son, Elizabeth becomes a gardener and works with a production group that grows and sells their vegetables in a
local market. During this time, Elizabeth begins to receive visits from two spiritual entities (for lack of a better term) named Sello and Dan Molomo. Throughout the
rest of the text, Sello and Dan Molomo (who initially represent Satan/God and Evil/Good respectively) vie for control of Elizabeth's mind in a process that pushes
her towards total insanity. As the text moves forward, Head complicates the binary of Good/Evil by having Sello and Dan Molomo exchange roles.

A Question of Power is a tour-de-force that explores the nature of being marginalized (by race, nationality and mental stability) through a mix of relatively straight
forward prose narration and deeply convoluted sections of magical realistic/psychedelic "trips" into Elizabeths head.
The book also contains much intertextuality. There are many references to western and world literature. Many times in the text, Elizabeth is compared to King
David from the bible, and what she is going through is likened to the David and Bathsheba story. There are also many references to Buddha, Indian religions/gods
and goddesses, D.H. Lawrence, Oscar Wildes obscenity trial, and James Baldwin, among many others. Numerous allusions to the Holocaust and Hitler are also
made in the text, for example, Head likens the way the Afrikaners treated the blacks in South Africa to the Third Reich's treatment and extermination of the Jews.
At one point in the text, Elizabeth says that one of the only things she learned from her descent into the hell of mental illness was how horrible life in a
concentration camp would have been. Head's inclusion of Nazi and Third Reich references are important to the text and the idea of binary opposition. In the 20th
century, one would be hard pressed to find a group that tried harder to cement binary oppositions (Aryan/pretty much everybody else) and use their power to
oppress others.

Towards the end of the book, Head writes:"If the things of the soul are really a question of power, then anyone in possession of power of the spirit could be
Lucifer." It all comes down to the issue of power. The power to determine which side of a binary takes precedence over the other is a great power and one that has
the ability to corrupt. If you are able to label someone as "sick" or "insane," you then have the power to lock them up in a hospital or an asylum (see Foucault's The
Birth of the Clinic).

So what do we do with binary oppositions? Derrida says that we need to play serious games with these oppositions to show their arbitrary nature and that, in so
doing, we take power from them (and those who employ them). Bessie Head's A Question of Power is an example of this "serious play." Through her fiction, Head
forces her readers to confront the dangers inherent in marginalizing people and arrives at the conclusion that individuals must confront both the sanity and insanity
that resides within themselves.
A OUESTION OF POWER
In A Ouestion of Power, Elizabeth's quest for psychic wholeness requires two
essential steps: one, a complete disintegration, through which Elizabeth must get rid of
truths she considered as absolute; and two, a reconstruction, which will reintegrate her
fragmented self and give her a new vision of herself and the world. Elizabeth is shattered
by the concepts of good and evil. Her psyche wrongly divides these two notions by
projecting two hallucinatory characters, Sello and Dan. Elizabeth is also shattered by a
bitter past which still haunts her, an uncertain birth origin, a traumatic experience of
apartheid in a coloured comrnunity in South Africa and an unsuccessfu1 marriage. She is
also tom by her wish to believe in an individual philosophy, which is in opposition to the
principles of the Christian religion in which she has been brought up. EIizabeth's present
and future are also maddening because they do not provide a satisfactory answer to her
problem of identity and to her family situation (she is the sole provider for her son).
Elizabeth feels lonely but she is caught between her wish to eventudly accept another man
in her life and her unconscious fear of men and sexual relationships,
Elizabeth's quest is similar to the novel's central metaphor: the story of Osiris and Isis. SelIo tells
Elizabeth that he is Osiris and that she is Isis (a 39). However, Sello is
Elizabeth's hallucination; thus she becomes both Osiris and Isis. According to the
Egyptian myth, Osiris was Iocked inside a sarcophagus and thrown into the Nile. After his
death, his corpse drifted on the Nile und the dislocation of his limbs. Isis then brought
together dl the body parts, with the exception of one, the penis, which was swallowed by a
fish. Therefore, symbolically, death represents life's final castration, but it is also the
essentiai element which makes another life possible. In the myth of Osiris we can then
distinguish three phases of psychic individuation: Osiris inside the sarcophagus is the
image of the integration of the self; the coffin shapes the outline of the individuality.
Osiris mutiiated is the image of disintegration. And finally Osiris reassernbled with an
etemal soul is the reintegration under a more elevated form, with a spiritual significance.
It is the ultirnate synthesis which characterizes a person who has finally reached the peak
of her evolution (Chevalier 714-715). Elizabeth, like Osiris, must also go through these
three phases in order to find psychic wholeness. She is at first trapped inside a chest of
individuation created by the society in which she lives. She has been defined and
classified while she yearns for something more universal. Elizabeth is also haunted by the
concepts of good and evil and by her unconscious fears; this will bring her to the second
phase: the cornplete disintegration and the symbolic death of her soul. She will be
shattered to pieces, and, in order to restore her mental balance, she will have to assume the
role of Isis.
The Osins-Isis myth is not the only metaphor used in the novel. Along with the
allegory of heaven and hell, Christ's crucifixion, death and resurrection -- the same three
symbolic phases found in the Osiris myth -- are also present in A Ouestion of Power.
Elizabeth engenders her own crucifixion. During the journey into her soul, she is
confronted by her unconscious wishes and fears, which could be seen as her own sins or
what she thinks are her sins. Moreover, Elizabeth, like Jesus-Christ, identifies herself with
mankind in general; therefore she takes upon herself the original sin and al1 the miseries of the worId in
order to redeem al1 humanity: "People cried out so ofien in agony against
racial hatred and oppressions of al1 kinds. All their tears seemed to be piling up on
[Elizabeth], and the source or roots from which they had sprung were being exposed with a
vehernent violence" (m 53). This self-crucifuon brings Elizabeth into the hellish part
of her sou1 where she undergoes a spiritual death and a cornplete breakdown. Finally,
Elizabeth "resurrects" and regains her psychic wholeness in order to prepare and create a
new world based on love @OP 35,201).
This chapter examines Elizabeth's joumey through these three phases by closely
analyzing the hallucinatory and the reai characters who threaten or conversely contribute to
Elizabeth's psychic wholeness. A Ouestion of Power is a circular novel and the first three
parts of this chapter will respect the order in which Elizabeth undergoes the different
phases of her journey. The first part is a study of the beginning of Elizabeth's journey into
madness, Le., her first halhcination of a man called Sello, whom she associates with good
and who is the teacher of a new kind of philosophy and religion. The second part is
Elizabeth's sojourn into purgatory, where a hallucination of the mythical Medusa forces
Elizabeth's psyche to bring her sins into consciousness. The third part will focus on
Elizabeth's symbolic death of the sou1 infiicted by her hallucination of Dan. Finally, the
non-hallucinatory characters (Tom, Shorty, Kenosi, Eugene, Mrs. Jones and Camilla), as
welI as the physical environment of Motabeng village, are exarnined in the last part of the
chapter.
Elizabeth's three main hallucinations wiIl be studied in more than a literary
psychoanalytical manner. Her hallucinations are not only the result of a psychological
trauma, they are dso a reflection of reality. Dan, for example, is both a African politician
and Elizabeth's repressed sexual fears and desires. Elizabeth's journey is characterized by
a constant movernent in and out of madness, or a sanity within insanity; her madness is
therefore a permanent struggle between her conscious and her unconscious selves. Very
often. Elizabeth's consciousness is able for a short tirne to employ ideas to counteract the horror of her
unconsciousness. For example, consciously, Eiizabeth refuses to believe in
the Christian God, while unconsciously she is draid of being damned for her impiety.
During one of her nightmares, she imagines Dan sprinkiing holy water and immediately
her consciousness emptoys this image to retrieve her sanity: "A part of ber mind which
was still a free observer of ail this laughed with silent contempt. God, and any gesture
towards the idea of God, stood clearly apart in her mind from al1 the gimmicks and foolery
of the priests" (AOP 146). In the following pages we will examine the two different
perceptions given by Elizabeth's consciousness or unconsciousness.
Sello's apparition marks the beginning of Elizabeth insanity. Elizabeth "was not
given to 'seeingt things" (AOP 22), but the narrator informs us that, three months after her
arriva1 in Motabeng, she does see Sel10 as though he were redly a live being. Elizabeth's
hallucinatory figures, Sello and Dan, are inspired by two living men in the village.
Elizabeth hardly knows these men and she has never talked to them. She only knows that
Sello is a married crop farmer and a caetle breeder who drives a green truck {AOP 28). As
for Dan, he is an entrepreneur and a politician who is "greatly admired for being an
African nationalist in a country where people were concerned about tribal affairs [...]. He is
one of the very few cattle millionaires of the country: "he ordered a fantastic array of suits
from somewherc, and he was short, black and handsome" (AOP 104). The fact that
Elizabeth's psyche chooses these two men in particular can be explained by what Freud
calls "the effect of the process of displacement" (Gay 156). According to Freud, "what
makes their way into the content of dreams are impressions and material which are
indifferent and trivial rather than justifiably stirring and interestingtl (Gay 156). Elizabeth
has always been indifferent to these two men until her psyche uses them to embody
specific concepts. Se110 becomes the personification of good and Dan the personification
of evil. In Elizabeth's tormented mind, they are however more than just concepts of good
and evil. They are both projections of her unconscious. What is kept and hidden in the
unconscious is usudIy what one has been unable to cope with in one's past. Insanity appears when these
repressed memories encroach on the present and prevent the person
from living a normal life. As 1 shall show later, Sello is largely Elizabeth's uncenainty
about religion and philosophy and Dan is primarily Elizabeth's repressed sexual wishes and
p hobias. Elizabeth suffers from what Freud calls psychoneurosis and "must be subjec ted
to psycho-analytic investigation, which is employed in the therapeutic procedure [...]
known [...] as 'catharsis"' (Gay 254).* In Elizabeth's case, she will employ her own
therapeutic means, and by rnaking the journey into her soul she wilI regain her psychic
wholeness.
A Ouestion of Power is divided into two equal parts, one devoted to Sello and the
other to Dan. This structure mirrors Elizabeth's false belief in an absolute division between
good and evil. This belief constitutes the starting point of her disintegration. Both Sello
and Dan are Elizabeth's guides for the journey into her soul. Sello, who is supposed to
represent the good side, should take Elizabeth into the heavenly part of her soul while Dan
should ostensibIy take her into the hellish one. However, EIizabeth discovers no such
good-evil dichotomy, and the discovery upsets her mental state.
At first everything seems to be working according to the good-evil construct that
Elizabeth imposes on nominal reality. Sello appears for the first tirne to Elizabeth under
the form of the "good guy": "he had introduced his own soul, so softiy like a heaven of
cornpIeteness and perfection" (Am 14). His first words to Elizabeth are "my friend !"
(AOP 22). Sello's stereotyped physicai look also reinforces this idea of perfection and
goodness. Sello is distinguishable by the colour of his white robe. According to the
Christian tradition and to Elizabeth, who has been brought up religiously, white is
associated with goodness and purity. But Sello's dress is illusory and a few months later,
Elizabeth's psyche will create the apparition of another Sei10 dressed in a brown suit. The
change of colour reflects Elizabeth's altering consciousness of good and evil. But at the
beginning of the novel, Elizabeth associates Sello with "an almost universally adored God"
(AOP 23). When the narne of Sello finally forms itself in Elizabeth's mind, she cannot help thinking about
the 'real' Sello, "a man she had seen about the village of Motabeng who
drove a green truck" (m 23). Driven by curiosity, she will not learn much about the
living man, but what she learns is enough for her to see him as a good person: "He is a
wonderful farnily man[...]. He keeps order in his house" (AOP 29). Therefore, Sello
qrckiy becomes the personification of good in Elizabeth's mind.
For Elizabeth Sello's apparition is auspicious. She accepted "an entirely unnatural
situation and adaptled] it to the flow of her life" (m 23). Elizabeth's hallucination of
Sel10 serves at first as a means to counter her loneliness. What attracts her in this
apparition are the full-time absorbing conversations with Sello; for Elizabeth, loneliness,
due to her partly voluntary withdrawal from village life, has become quite unbearable to
her. Joyce Johnson notes that
Elizabeth harbours feelings of anger and resentrnent because [...] of her isolation
in the community to which she goes. In that community there is a deep-rooted
belief that 'if a man is alone with his thoughts, he may think of some mischief he
cm do.' Elizabeth's consciousness of her isolation also gives her a feeling of guilt.
Her interna1 anger and resentment and her sense of guilt are like evil powers
guiding her thoughts and undermining her capacity to form healthy social
relationships. (200)
Elizabeth longs for serious and interesting discussions. She is very eager to share her
views and ideas. It is what she calls "testing her sanity against" other people (AP 15).
Elizabeth is afraid to be thought insane because of her theory that man is God, even if "a
young IVS volunteer from England" (AOP 15) (who resembles Gilbert in When Rain
Clouds Gatherl once understood and accepted her vision. But at the beginning of A
Ouestion of Power, there is no one with whom Elizabeth can share such views. Her
deranged mind then creates an apparition, Sello, who seems so real that sometimes she
prepares two cups of tea, one for her and one for him, or she asks her visitors not to sit on
the chair, because it is where Sello sits (AOP 23, 24). Elizabeth's psyche creates Sello
male because Elizabeth needs manly conversations, with "deep metaphysical profundities"
(AQP 24). Therefore, it imagines the basis of the relationship between Sello and Elizabeth
to be masculine. Sello is a fragment of her imagination; therefore he teaches Elizabeth al1 the beautiful
theories which she wants to believe.
By creating polarized hallucinations around Sello and Dan, Elizabeth's psyche can
test out two opposed philosophical viewpoints before creating her own. These
philosophies are the two conflicting responses to oppression and humiliation; Sello
embodies "the way of tolerance and non-violence dong which Gandhi had tried to lead the
Indians, and Dan embodies the way of violence recommended by militant black activists"
(Johnson 199). Elizabeth begins by exploring Sello's philosophy, and, as part of
Elizabeth's soul, the concepts Sello embodies contain the seeds of eventual psychic
wholeness. "He had defined the future, in African terms, as one of uncompromising
goodness. It has been fixed for her securely in his earlier attitudes" (AOP 95). The words
he utters remain inside Elizabeth's mind and she is able to draw on them after her
breakdown in order to regain her mental equilibrium. At the beginning of the novel, one
can safely Say that Sello-in-the-white-robe gives Elizabeth al1 the theory she requires for
the creation of a new world based on love, which comprises a non-racial brotherhood,
voluntary poverty, humility and compassion.
In her dreams, Elizabeth clearly identifies Se110 with Buddha: "Elizabeth turned
and looked at Sello. He averted his face. It was Buddha, and the only face she had
acquired apart from Sello" (AOP 32). In fact, in his white robe, Sello is the incarnation of
a great teacher, and his physicai appearance is a 'venture' or 'visible body' assumed by the
spirit or creative force (Johnson 202). It is the Buddhist idea of the great teacher who,
having earned the right to enter Nirvana, voluntarily gives up and takes on a visible body
in order to continue his work arnong mankind (Johnson 202). Sello's teachings concern the
world of the future. Sello is therefore a prophet. His devotees include Elizabeth and he
prophesies a role for her in the creation of a new, beautiful and humanistic world. This
notion of prophecy reveais Elizabeth's dream to be recognized in a world which keeps
refusing her a place. It gives her the feeling of belonging to the whole world and universe
instead of being restricted to a race or nation. It also provides her with hope for the future and gives
purpose to her life. It aiiows her to envisage herself as one of the saviours of
Africa; it heightens her ego and attests to her usefulness in this ungrateful world.
According to Elizabeth's Hindu-and-Buddhist-inspired philosophy, her role is suetched out
over a long tirne period because she believes in reincarnation. Elizabeth's psyche has no
difficulty accepting the hallucination of Se110 and his theories because she imagines that
she has already worked with him in previous lives. However, this philosophy can both
help and harm Elizabeth. Indeed, according to Buddhist philosophy, suffering is a
necessary experience to elevate the soul; therefore we cm see in Elizabeth a tendency to
masochism in order to becorne a real soul entity. Elizabeth develops feelings of
destruction and guilt which leads to an unconscious wish for punishment.
Elizabeth's relationship to Sello is one of a pupil and "favourite disciple" (AOP
25).9 This suggests that Elizabeth prefers to be taught than to teach. In creatjng the
hallucination of Sello, she creates for herself a master that she has never found in red life,
one who preaches ber beliefs. She does not want to be the originator of a new kind of
philosophy; it is a lot easier to follow a path that has already been prepared by others.
Sello's teachings are therefore a lot easier to accept because she imagines that they are not
hers. Elizabeth is very confused about religion and philosophy. Since her childhood,
Elizabeth has striven to tum away from Roman Catholicism toward Hinduism (AOP
16).10 Therefore, al1 her life Elizabeth has been caught between remnants of Catholicism
and Oriental beliefs. and she yearns for a synthesis.1 1 Elizabeth is not however
completely at ease with her own theories; she is afraid to blaspheme against the God of
her childhood by adopting a foreign philosophy which does not satisfy her either.12 The
hallucination of Sello is thus a means to weigh her ideas from an outsider's perspective.
Elizabeth's philosophy is the one followed by the people she considers practicd and
ordinary. It is based on respect, love and equality of individuds. Elizabeth is struggling to
elevate her soul but it is more difficult for her because she is an educated middle-class
coloured woman and, as Ella Robinson notes, "the more one knows, the less secure one is. Elizabeth
takes this notion to [the] exueme. She aiIows her insecurities to create fear. In
the midst of it rises paranoia and self doubt" (75). Moreover, Elizabeth "envies the
poverty-stricken masses who seem to have reached nirvana in their abiiity to cope with
daily life in peace and security" (Robinson 75).
Elizabeth's psyche confers upon Sello the roIe of a teacher who is going to preach
that humans contain their own divinity. For Elizabeth, God is not somewhere up in the sky
watching people, he is in every living human being; therefore every man is sacred and
should be so treated. Sello teaches this belief to Elizabeth in three lessons 13. Sello's first
teaching is that there are gods even among white people. Even though Elizabeth was bom
in South Africa and grew to hate her country and whites (AQP 191, in Botswana, she has
met some white people who are so good and so concerned about their fellow humans that
she cari no longer generalize her hate for whites. Consequently, she expresses, through
Sello's words, that her 'South African hate' for whites should be suppressed. Elizabeth's
conscious self has no difficulty accepting ths statement but she nevertheless needs an
example. The next logical step is to point out one white man who could be God. As a
second lesson, Sello introduces "The Father" to Elizabeth with whom he can easily
interchange his soul.
Elizabeth, instead of using the word God, employs the Christian term of "The
Father". In the Christian religion, the word "Father" is used to make God more human,
more accessible and more cornprehensible to children. SymboIicaIly, the Father represents
ail the figures of authority: chief, teacher, protector, God (Chevalier 741). This is
probably Elizabeth's favourite Christian perception of God, especialIy because she never
really had a father and is raising a child without one. Elizabeth is an "illegitimate" child
and in her imagination the father is a noble hero who watches over her, warns her of great
dangers but also deserts her. But the role played by the Father in the novel is more linked
to the author Bessie Head than to her character of Elizabeth. The Father is none other than
Gilbert from When Rain Clouds ~ather.14 Bessie Head uses the same description of Gilbert in her two
novels. in When Rain Clouds Gather we read: "[Gilbert] was not big,
he was a giant, and his massive frarne made him topple forward slightitly and sway as he
walked. He never wore much except short khaki pants and great hobnailed boots, and
because of this, the sun had burned him a dark brown hue, and this in turn accentuated the
light-blue colouring of his eyes so that they glittered" (WRCG 29). In A Question of
Power, the description goes as follows:
A ta11 big-built man wearing only short khaki pants and boots came walking
along the pathway to Elizabeth's house. [...] The Sun had directly transferred
itself to his face and its light was flying in al1 directions. He sat down on
Elizabeth's bed, picked up his right leg and flung it over tris lefi knee and looked
at Sello. He said nothing, and the expression in his eyes was difficult to define.
[...] He stared with wide, blue eyes at the distant horizon ... (AOP 30, 1 18)
Like "The Father" in A Ouestion of Power, who puts on the dirty rags wom by the poor
man in Africa and teaches Elizabeth the word poverty (AOP 30), Gilbert is the one who
shares the life of the poor in order to help them: "[He] came along and spent an hour
outlining plans to uplift the poor"; he also has the "habit of referring to the poor as though
they were his blood brother" (WRCG 24). Bessie Head really saw a God in Gilbert and
she uses him in her third novel (and in her psyche too) as living proof of her theory that
man is god. The Father says to Elizabeth: "We have worked together for a long time. [...]
We'll work together again, but you prepare the way" (AOP 30). This sentence could be
read as Bessie Head's own private wish to see and work again with Gilbert for the good of
humanity. In A Ouestion of Power, The Father taught Elizabeth the meaning of Poverty
and this lesson has been well accepted by Elizabeth's consciousness. She is then ready for
Sello's next lesson.
Elizabeth's psyche projects the image of the poor of Africa with "sad, frre-washed
faces [...], the expression of people who had been killed and killed and killed again in one
cause after another for the Iiberation of mankind a0P 31). For Elizabeth, these are
hallucinations which she employs to convince herself that people are Gods. Once again
Elizabeth's consciousness is ready to accept this as a proof. In Elizabeth's case we see that insanity is not
a brutal loss of reality and consciousness; rather it is a progressive passage
into awareness of what has been kept hidden in the unconscious. During Sello's first three
lessons, which correspond to the beginning of Elizabeth's journey into madness, Elizabeth
is capable of keeping a more or less critical view of what her hallucinations represent. She
is fully aware that some people, black or white, are so good and generous that they must be
gods in their own ways. Gilbert and al1 ordinary people fighting for the good of mankind
are living examples of this. But Elizabeth's consciousness rapidly loses its power to
censure what has been repressed in her unconscious. Unchecked words and insinuations
begin to appear in Sello's teachings as Elizabeth's psyche starts to pull down the protective
barriers between her conscious and unconscious and al1 her repressed fears and wishes take
hallucinatory form and substance and drive her into madness.
Sello's first slip of the tongue occurs when "the types of people [he] refer[s] to as
'the Gods' turn out on observation to be ordinary, practical, sane people [...lu (AOP 31).
Elizabeth's dream is to help mankind and to do so she must be a God. However, even if
she considers herself ordinary and practical she is unsure about her sanity. During her
childhood, Elizabeth "became aware of subconscious appeals to share love, to share
suffering; she wondered if the persecution had been so much the outcome of the
principal's twisted version of life as the silent appeal of her dead mother: 'Now you know.
Do you think 1 can bear the stigma of insanity alone? Share it with me"' (AOP 17). Al1 her
life, Elizabeth has lived with the uncertainty of whether her mother was really insane or
whether she had been locked up for "having a child by the stable boy, who was a native"
(ADP 16). When her deranged mind projects the hallucination of a poor old woman
asking her if she wants to help the people who have suffered, Elizabeth nods her head in
silent assent (AOP 3 l), but she knows that she cannot help. She is not a god (AOP 38) and
cannot be one because she fails the last prerequisite. Elizabeth is driven crazy because she
excludes herself from her theory that man contains his own divinity. Sello, to whom she
gave the role of master and teacher of this philosophy, fails in disgrace. In Elizabeth's rnind, people can
oniy be Gods if they are entirely good. But the airn
of Elizabeth's journey is to examine this absolute belief. At the end of the novel, Elizabeth
discovers that good need not necessarily triumph over evil and that God need not be
completely good. It is only when she finally admits that every human being has this
necessary baiance of good and evil that she will regain some semblance of balance. She
then accepts her own good and evil nature and nothing prevents her from beginning the
process of becorning a god for the good of mankind. To fully understand Elizabeth's
difficult task to reconcile these two notions, one must search for the origins of this absolute
division in Elizabeth's mind. It is useful to ask the question: what does Elizabeth consider
as good and what does she consider as evil? The answer resides in the religious as well as
the philosophical belief that everything coming from the soul is good whde everything
concerning the flesh is evil. Sello is the personification of good because he is a soul entity:
he introduced his soul Iike "a heaven of completeness and perfection." Dan is the
personification of evil because he represents the physical body, therefore ai1 hurnan
desires. Elizabeth feels only the "extreme gentleness and tendemess" of Dan's personaiify.
Bessie Head's choice of the two terms, soul and personaiity, marks this difference well.
At the beginning of the novel, Elizabeth is not yet ready to accept that people
embody both good and evil and she prefers to separate these two notions by projecting
another Sello who is the exact replica of the first one. The new Sello is distinguishable by
the colour of his brown robe. This differentiation reveals two aspects of Elizabeth, the
depth of her confusion and her hopes. In tenns of skin colour, she cm no langer always
associate white with apartheid and evil deeds as she used to in South Africa. She has met
many good and generous white people and consequently changes her extreme position
against whites to a more moderate one. Still in South Africa, blacks are always the
oppressed and the humble ordinary people with whom she wisbes to be associated.
However, in Botswana, she has discovered egotistical power-seeking black people, and as
a "rnixed-breed", she also feels rejected and unwanted as a real African. Elizabeth's insanity takes place
while she is living in Botswana and, resentfuily, she associates brown
with evil.
But there is more to al1 of this: Sello the rnonk and Sello-in-the-brown-suit are two
parts of the sarne person. Therefore, in terms of individuals, Sello is a mixed-breed person,
like Elizabeth. Or to take up Elizabeth's drearn of a new worId, Sello is a raceless,
universal man: "It seemed also incidental that he was African. So vast had his inner
perceptions grown over the years that he preferred an identification with mankind to an
identification with a particular environment" @QP 1 1). Creating Sello, Elizabeth's psyche
accomplishes two specific aims. It projects by a displacement of reaiity a hallucination
which is in every aspect Elizabeth herself, and by doing so it gives to Elizabeth the object
of the transfer15 which will restore her psychic wholeness. In her madness. Elizabeth is
not aware that Sello is her alter ego because the process of displacement made him a man,
but Elizabeth has a feeling of close resernblance which she fails to understand fully.
Elizabeth and Sello are "twin souls with closely-linked destinies" (AOP 11) and EIizabeth's
soul-power is cornposed of the same material as Sello's: "it was, in its final state, passive,
inactive, impersonal. It was linked in some way to the creative function, the dreamer of
new drearns" (AOP 42). Elizabeth will regain her psychic wholeness when she accepts
and understands Sello as he is, with his good and evil sides. Insofar as Sello is a projection
of herself she will then accept her own balance of good and evil. It nevenheless takes
Elizabeth nearly four years to rehabilitate Sello and concomitantly establish a basis of seif-
understanding necessary for her own spiritual healing.
At the beginning of the novel, Elizabeth's psyche projects Sello as a compIete soul
entity but after the failure of his teaching, Elizabeth begins to perceive him as a man with
human desires. Elizabeth then imagines that Sello's soul is very oId and that he belongs to
the first age-group which brought dark time and evil until he "broke down and cried" (AOP
34). On the other hand. she thinks that she belongs to the age-group of people with nobIer
dreams. This suggests that Elizabeth links Sello and later Medusa to the first mythoIogicai human
ancestors, Adam and Eve, who brought evil into the world. Adam symboiises the
original sin, the perversion of the mind, the absurd use of freedom and the wish to be
completely independent (Chevalier 8). But Adam has been created only in God's own
image and not identical to God. Adam then committed the original sin by trying to identify
himself with God. Elizabeth's separation of the two Sellos is not only a question of
accepting the good-evil dichotomy which exists in every human being, it is also a question
of religious belief. Elizabeth links Sello-in-the-brown-suit with Adam while she Links
Sello-in-the-white-robe with Jesus Christ. Ineed, according to Christian doctrine, Jesus
Christ is the second Adam, but he is nut an image anymore, he is reality. Jesus Christ is
man deified. Therefore, sin is impossibIe for this second Adam and he can grant grace,
holiness and eternal life, from which humanity has been deprived by the original sin
(Chevalier 8). Elizabeth, by belonging to the second age-group, imagines that she has
already been redeemed by Christ, and, consequently, she cm aim at creating a new Christ-
like world based on love and brotherhood, However, she is still confused by the existence
of sin in every individual and sin's power to force a person into evil. Elizabeth is dnven
crazy because she thinks she has to make a choice. If she wants to be a God, she must
choose only the things of the soul, Iike Sello-in-the-white-robe, but she knows that she is
human and therefore she too embodies original sin, like Sello-in-the-brown-suit. To be
able to mdce a choice Elizabeth must explore the extent of her own sins.
Because Elizabeth possesses a volatile temperarnent, the energy she early employed
in loving Sello-in-the-white-robe is turned to vehernent hatred for him and his replica,
"Sello the monk. It was against him that she was to slowly develop a deep. black rage. He
was very clearly using her as a focus for his observations of Medusa and Sello of the
brown suit. He sat there staring at them fixedly, unmovingly, without censure" (AQP 62).
Elizabeth's hatred for Sello evinces her own self-hatred and self-devalorisation. Sello-in-
the-brown-suit is evil because he is a man with human needs. The most important
statement of Sello-in-the-white-robe's doctrine is: "to overcome one's passions as the source of al1 evil"
(AOP 12). Elizabeth wants to be part of this philosophy; therefore,
from the beginning of the novel, the reader is aware that Elizabeth wiU have to fight her
own passions, which will take her into xnadness. In Elizabeth's imagination, Sello-in-the-
brown-suit is the image of Sello the monk, as a failen angel: " Raw passions had never
been admissible in those relationships, but when the mind of the monk was turned down
towards earthly things he becarne a grotesque murderer" (AOP 99). And indeed, Sello
'killed' the wife of "an unpleasant sort of man", because "she was like a raging beast" (AOP
28). To fully explore the depth of Sello's evil, Elizabeth's psyche creates another
hallucination: Medusa. Medusa is Sello's "own intemal darkness"; she "is reaily the
direct and tangible form of his own evils, his power Iusts, his greed, his self-importance,
and these dorninate him totally and bring him to the death of the soul" (AOP 40).
Elizabeth's rnadness cornes from her incapacity to reconcile the sou1 with human needs.
Consciously, she strongly wishes to be only a soul entity but she dso feels the pain and the
temptation created by unfulfilled needs of the body. Consequently, she hates herself for
this "evil" which exists in her.
Elizabeth does not accept Sello's human needs and especially his sexual needs. She
discovers that Sello-in-the-brown-suit's iink with Medusa was rnerely sexuai: "he seemed
ro be desperately attached to that thing Medusa had which no other woman had [...]. It was
abnormally constructed, like seven thousand vaginas in one, turned on and operating at
white heat" (AOP 64). For Elizabeth, who believes in romantic love, she cannot approve
love based only on sexual attraction. Also, because she rejects human needs, Elizabeth's
unconscious transforms sexuality into perversion. Thus Sello-in-the-brown-suit becomes a
homosexuai and an incestuous father. Sello's hornosexuality is probably a projection by
Elizabeth of her unsuccessful marriage to a bisexual husband (AOP 19). The satanic
image of Sello-in-the-brown-suit comrnitting incest with his daughter (AOP 140) derives
frorn Elizabeth's mernories of the South African slums where she was brought up (AOP
117). This nightrnare drove her to such a point of insanity that she finally took it for reality and publicly
denounced the living Sello. This deed marks the peak of Elizabeth's
disintegration and her second confinement to a psychiatric hospital.
Elizabeth is able to recognize that Sello possesses a two-sided personality: "he's
really Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [...]. [Sello] has seen that evil and good travel side by side
in the same personaiity" (AOP 57, 98). But she does not understand this and therefore
cannot regain her psychic whoieness yet. "She could not sort out Sello, the shutthg
movements he made between good and evil, the way he had introduced absolute perfection
and flung muck in her face" (AOP 137). Just before taking her nightrnare for reality, it
was the kind of answer she wanted from Sello. "What's wrong with you Sello? Why must
you alternate Iives of sainthood with spells of debauchery?" she asks him (AOP 175).
Elizabeth feeIs caught up in a vicious circle in which she sees no way out. In her
nightmares she has seen Sello's evil so that she cannot close her eyes to it and pretend that
he is still a perfect god. On the other hand, "a belief in Sello's evil was to amount to a
belief in the evil of a thousand people" (AOP 141), and this statement is unbearable to
Elizabeth. Consequently, she must get into her own 'evil side' if she wants to understand
the importance of the balance of good and evil. Elizabeth's psyche then projects the
hallucination of Medusa, who will become her guide into her own purgatory.
Medusa is the personification of the femme fatale dominating the world by her
beauty. She is Eve who cornmitted the original sin and tempted Adam. But Medusa is the
source of evil and she has more of Lilith, as described in the rabbinic legend16 than of
Eve. In A Ouestion of Power, Medusa embodies the need to seduce and dominate
sexually. Elizabeth's psyche projects Medusa as the hallucination of a woman who is the
opposite of Elizabeth's perception of herself. But Medusa is aiso both Elizabeth's sexual
wishes and shame. Elizabeth unconsciously wishes to have an orgasmic vagina like
Medusa, but on the other hand she would probably be asharned of it. When Medusa
"sprawis her long black Iegs in the air" Elizabeth does not omit to Say that it is done
"without bother for decencies" (AOP 44). Elizabeth presents the two contradictions found in hysterical
patients: an exaggerated sexual craving and an excessive aversion to
sexuality (in the fonn of shame, disgust and morality) (Gay 255).
Medusa is more than just a femme fatale , she is a goddess with an dl-seeing eye
and she points an accusatory finger at Elizabeth. Taken in this sense, Medusa bears well
her mythologicai name. According to the Roman rnyth, people who saw her face were
turned into Stone. This suggest that Medusa rnirrors the image of personal guilt (Chevalier
432). Elizabeth is guilty of many crimes: a rejection of sexuality , a wish to become
African while making no efforts to do so, a harbouring of inferiority feelings about her
ongins and her physical appearance and a harbouring of prejudices. Elizabeth is not at
ease with her sexuality and she reduces it to a bare necessity: her vagina - which "was not
such a pleasant area of the body to concentrate on, possibly only now and then if
necessary"(A0P 44). Elizabeth aiso wishes to be recognized as an African instead of a
"Coloured". Consciously, Elizabeth accuses the Botswanans of rejecting and persecuting
her because she is a "Coloured". Now, unconsciously she is pointing out her part of
responsibility for this rejection. Medusa accuses Elizabeth of having absolutely no link
with African people because she does not know any African languages17 (AOP 44).
Finally, Elizabeth is asharned of her mixed-breed ongins. 'Coloured' is a term abhorred by
Elizabeth because it reduces her to racial classification instead of a human being with a
personality. It also reminds her of al1 the shame she felt when living in a "Coloured"
community in South Africa. In Elizabeth's mind, coloured is associated with open
homosexuality, homosexual men parading in women's clothes in the streets with people
around laughing at them. Elizabeth refuses to be associated with this image and prefers to
repudiate her origins, to the point of becoming stark raving mad.
Elizabeth's psyche also uses Medusa for a physicai comparison with Elizabeth's
own self. Because Medusa is a beauty queen, Elizabeth ends up depreciating herself: "I'm
not saying I'm not ugly myself. 1 shouldn't mind if anyone told me I'm ugly because 1
know it is true. [...] Agh, 1 don't really care if 1 look like the backside of a donkey" (AOP 48). Medusa,
being one voice of her unconscious, we cm add that Elizabeth is also
concerned about her body. Medusa once gave her a plate of food which she snatched away
the next minute frorn Elizabeth, accusing her of being too fat (AOP 61). Here it is evident
that Elizabeth's criteria for beauty belong to white standards, and that Elizabeth dislikes the
African elements in herself. Medusa accuses her of hating Africans because of their
physical appearance: "You don't like the African hair. You don't Iike the African nose ..."
48). Elizabeth's physical perception of herself reveals also two things: that she
thinks of herself as a failure because she does not like her physical appearance, but on the
other hand, she uses her ugliness as an excuse to reject her sexuaI needs. Medusa
symbolises al1 women and their ability to tempt and corrupt men. Elizabeth, by convicing
herself that she is tocalIy unattractive, unconsciously rejects the ferninine element in her.
But once again EIizabeth is confused and consciously, she knows that she is attractive;
didn't Tom called her Lucrecia Borgia, a woman famous for her beauty? At the end of the
novel, when Elizabeth has regained her psychic wholeness, she ceases to see woman's
beauty as a flaw and as a means of compting innocence and propagating evil. in this new
vision, "women were bath goddesses and housekeepers and there was a tirne for loving"
(AOP 201).
The ha1Iucination of Medusa does not oniy operate at an unconscious level.
Medusa is, according to Elizabeth's diseased psyche, the "expressing [...] surface reality of
African society" (AOP 38). On another level of consciousness, Elizabeth finds this
attitude quite maddening. According to her then, people should look beyond such surface
reality and see instead the equaiity of souls. This reference to an African surface reality is
airned more at South-African society than at the Botswanan. At the beginning of the
novel, Elizabeth makes a brief comparison between the Botswanan and the South African
greeting. In Botswana, she is very surprised at people's concern for each other, unlike in
South Africa where she has been used to insults. That Elizabeth aiiows Medusa this
quality reveals that in her madness, she has moments of complete lucidity and sanity -- the same kind of
clarity of consciousness she attains when Kenosi or Tom corne and ask her to
work. However, it is ironic to notice that Elizabeth, being from South Africa, also
incorporates this aspect of Medusa about superficiaiity, especially when she pays so much
attention to physicai appearance.
Elizabeth's Medusa halIucination is only the transition between heaven and hell.
Medusa represents what the Christian religion would cal1 the recognition of one's sin.
Medusa is the one who harms deliberately: "[her] eyes were full of comprehension, bold,
conscienceless, deliberate" (AOP 92); therefore she is the one who brings other people's
sins to consciousness. Elizabeth confessed herself and her hallucination of Medusa
disappears. Then cornes an extension of Medusa's hallucination: Dan (AOP 168).
Elizabeth is now able to resume her journey into hell and receive her unconscious
pnishrnent.l8
Elizabeth's psyche keeps intact the Christian belief that Satan is a male figure;
therefore Elizabeth's hallucination takes the form of a man (Dan) to embody the concept of
evil. Satan is the irnitator of God and Dan is dressed in a white cloth like Sello. However,
the impression Dan makes on Elizabeth is totally different from the one given by Sello.
Sello wears his robe "in a particular fashion, with his shoulders slightly hunched forward,
as though it were a prison garment" (AOP 22) while Dan keeps "his hands clasped in front
of him as though his life were a constant prayer" (AOP 96). These two descriptions
suggest again that Elizabeth's psyche associates Sello with the abstract world of the soul,
which is the reason why his earthly garment is painful to him, while she links Dm to the
materialistic world, with al1 the faise outer pretense one has to adopt.
Elizabeth's hallucination in the form of Dan embodies her three great unconscious
fears. Dan is the symbolic representation of the horror of apartheid and what for EIizabeth
are the two African defects: the African man's loose, carefree sexuality and witchcraft
practices (AOP 137). Elizabeth drives herself crazy by creating in her mind a monster,
which she cails Dan or Satan, who embodies ail the evil she abhors. Elizabeth's mental iilness is rooted in
a past she has not yet coped with. Her life
experience in South Africa left ber with a scarred psyche. She hates the country for the
'natural hatred' which exists between people: "[whites] were born that way, hating people,
and a black man or woman was just bom to be hated" (AOP 19)- The power-maniacs are
responsible for this because they "never saw people, humanity, tendemess." Apartheid in
South Africa is therefore endless, "just this vicious vehement struggle between two sets of
people with different looks; and, Iike Dan's brand of torture, it was something that could
go on and on" (AOP 19). Elizabeth had no regrets accepting a 'no retum' exit permit from
South Africa, but when she Ieft for Botswana she did not know that Afncan life too had its
maddening defects.
At first, Elizabeth finds Botswanans to be very polite and sociable in their
greetings. However, she also learns about a "permanent adult garne" cded "1 bewitch you
and you'll bewitch me" (AOP 21). ln South Africa, Elizabeth had been used to open
animosity. In Botswana she discovers the subtieties and the psychoIogical effects of evil.
It is therefore not surprising to see in htr nightmares, Dan parading again the same
ordinary peopIe chat Sel10 showed her earlier, "but this time as chain-gang slaves. They
had the sleepish expressions of people with hidden evils" (AOP 119). Here, a link could
be made with SelIo 'killing' women psychoiogicdiy (AOP 27). His wonderful goodness
shown at the beginning also hides an invisible mental evil. Elizabeth discovers through her
nightmares that the power of the sou1 represented by Se110 has its own evil side. Elizabeth,
who is aspiring to this kind of power, cannot accept that she aIso has two sides. Dan, who
embodies physical power, is even more dangerous because he uses both open and hidden
evil. Dunng her first months in Botswana, Elizabeth couId not understand Botswanan
gullibility vis--vis their superstitions, but it finally affected her more than she thought:
"Such a terror was to fil1 her rnind at a Iater stage that she would look back on the early
part of her life in Botswana and think that the personality who held her life in a death-grip
must really be the master of the psychalogy behind witchcraft" (AOP 21). For Elizabeth,