Power and Toxic Bodies in Naomi Alderman’s The Power and Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure

In the dystopian tradition, control over the lives and bodies of individuals is realized through several techniques. In Naomi Alderman’s The Power (2016) and Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure (2018), such relationship between the physical body and the influence upon other people within the limitations of the body are the central issues discussed. Female characters in both texts begin to change their perspective about power over other male characters soon after they realize the changes within their body. In The Power, this becomes possible through the skein, the electrical power discovered within only women’s bodies, which becomes deadly for men. This type of physical power is gradually transformed into an imbalanced political and social power. So, the skein becomes an embodied power, which can be interpreted as a form of agency from the perspective of new materialism. In The Water Cure, the unexpected absence of patriarchal figures leads the female protagonists to quit routine practices such as water rituals that are assumed to keep them away from the deadly toxins of the world outside. The real existence of electrical power and the hypothetical existence of toxins in these texts indicate that such nonhuman matters contribute to determining the whole political and social systems. Regarding these issues, studies mainly about new materialism, power and gender relations are included in this study to demonstrate that power and gender relations can be closely related to individuals’ relation to nonhuman matter and the material world. In light of these, this thesis aims to indicate that the double meanings of “toxicity” and “power” are deeply interconnected to each other in that the literal meaning of power and toxicity has repercussions in the understanding of their figurative meanings, which results in dystopian worlds endowed with toxic people and manipulative powerful individuals