She also mentions that she’s turned on by the descriptions of being locked up for sex by men, that they constitute a fantasy for many women. After reading the book, Naomi responds to Neil by noting the unlikelihood of male crime gangs and police officers, and by saying that it is more likely that women provoked the violence initially. This exchange of letters sets up a world in which women are the dominant gender, hinting at some of the small ways in which men (in the new world shaped by the power) face discrimination. The frame of the book introduces the fictional author of the text, Neil Adam Armon (an anagram of Naomi Alderman), asking a fictionalized version of Naomi herself for advice about his work. This allows readers to look with fresh eyes at contemporary society, as Alderman uses the shock of descriptions in which men are subjugated in comparison with how normalized discrimination against women has become in reality. Alderman makes a point to highlight the inequality that women lord over men in passages that feel eerily parallel to current discourse on sexism, only with the gender roles reversed. But after women start to gain the power, they turn those gender dynamics on their heads. At the beginning of the novel, gender relations reflect contemporary society: a patriarchy in which men are more generally dominant, which Alderman posits is due to the fact that men are more able to inflict violence, and therefore more able to gain power. The Power provides a critical look at gender dynamics.
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