In the game of chess, the Queen’s Gambit is an opening in which white opens by moving first the pawn in front of the king, and then, if black mirrors in response, white moves the pawn in front of the bishop. This opens a path for white’s queen to make moves. Black can then either take the pawn (the Queen’s Gambit accepted) or decline to take the pawn (the Queen’s Gambit declined). The Queen’s Gambit allows white to take control of the center of the board quickly.
Sound confusing? There’s a helpful video that illustrates and explains it all on the Chess Website (which, I imagine since Netflix’s premiere of the Queen’s Gambit, has been getting a great deal of traffic lately).
The Queen’s Gambit involves two competing forces: control and sacrifice. It requires white to risk a pawn (possibly to sacrifice a pawn) for control. And indeed, The Queen’s Gambit, the Netflix series directed by Scott Frank, is aptly titled. The series is about Beth Harmon (played by the wonderful Anya Taylor-Joy), a young orphaned female chess prodigy whose sacrifices are at once subtle and profound.
If chess is a metaphor for life, the sacrifices one makes to gain advantage in a single game can often mirror the sacrifices one makes in life to gain advantages of the same. Harmon sacrifices relationships and her childhood in order to excel. She is warned that this will be a reality of her life by her teacher, the janitor at her orphanage, who explains that she has great talent, but that her talent doesn’t come without its price. In the Queen’s Gambit, the price may be a pawn. In life, the price is often more consequential.
Harmon’s life is ultimately shown to be a lonely one punctuated by addiction and obsession (at least until SPOILER ALERT, the last episode, where she makes amends to everyone).
I found myself disappointed by this easy tidying up. To assume that relationships could be easily repaired by winning a game is an illusion best left to Hollywood. The Queen’s Gambit indulges heavily in the fantasy that success of any kind will somehow repair all deficiencies in an otherwise deficient life.
And yet, the Queen’s Gambit does comment on something important. As Carina Chocano wrote in the New York Times Magazine, “Nobody cheers for the girl genius while she’s out there. Being a genius.” The Queen’s Gambit does indeed offer an alternative to the idea that female genius must either be institutionalized or buried. In fact, as the story progressed, I actually believed Beth Harmon’s story was memoir, not fiction. I thought the story was following in the footsteps of Hidden Figures, where female genius that had long been hidden from the spotlight was finally being granted its due. The Queen’s Gambit is not memoir, but is rather, based upon a novel written by Walter Tevis.
It is, sadly, a work of fiction.
I say sadly, because Beth Harmon could not exist in our world. Ours is not a world that easily forgives (or celebrates) female ambition. Whether you’re trying to compete on the chess board, or anywhere else, there’s always someone who will tell you that you don’t belong there. Beth Harmon is told she doesn’t belong in the chess world, but she quickly puts her detractors to shame. And she’s celebrated for it. She defeats men and they want to sleep with her. She gets press. She’s isn’t sexualized solely for her fabulous style (which she has in abundance), but because she has real talent.
This is a fantasy world I wish existed. Yes, in 2020, women may compete in the world, and often on the same playing field as the men. And though we might not overtly be told we don’t belong (not always, at least), there will always be subversive ways we’re told we don’t belong (CNN reports that the gender wage gap means that women make 78 cents for every dollar earned by men). The women who put their detractors to shame are seldom celebrated for it. A successful woman is feared, not desired. And our wins are often followed by the press, always quick to cast the achievement underneath some kind of shadow. (I think about the sheer glee with which we delighted in the downfall of Elizabeth Holmes—putting aside for just a moment whether the downfall was deserved, her narrative follows a familiar theme, the idea that female success must be a fluke, or better yet, a fraud.)
There’s an immense cognitive dissonance that must be overcome when you’re being told that being female makes you incapable of doing something; when you’re told you’re just not good enough. A New York Times article on how The Queen’s Gambit has revealed the challenges that female chess players face, notes that Garry Kasparov once said that playing good chess was just not in a woman’s nature. Society and societal expectations can go a long way to holding a woman back, especially a little girl. According to Elizabeth Spiegel, a chess expert, boys tend to be overconfident in chess, while girls are more measured. In chess, as in other areas of life, overconfidence can be the difference between success and failure, and sometimes be the difference between even making an attempt. The New York Times also notes that lack of social support often leads to many women giving up chess. If my experiences in surfing or rock climbing are any indication, I imagine that these are also reasons women give up other endeavors or fail to excel. If you don’t have mentors or can’t see a path forward for yourself, few have the courage to blaze a new path.
This is not a problem unique to chess. The overconfidence of boys translates perhaps into more failures, but also into more wins and success. The subtle and not-so-subtle discouragements can cause real harm to one’s confidence. The lack of female (or even male) mentorship creates gaps.
And then there’s culture. Success, strength, and genius are not often linked to femininity. Despite the push to remind girls that they can be more than pinups, the culture keeps reminding them that their value, strength, and sexuality derives from their looking pretty. What is intoxicatingly new about The Queen’s Gambit is that femininity is made analogous to strength, success, and genius, without the main character ending up in a sanitarium in the end.
What if we lived in a world where the queen, in the Queen’s Gambit didn’t have to sacrifice her pawn to take the center of the board? What if we lived in a culture where the queen didn’t have to start on a disadvantage to take control? What if the Queen could start with everything intact; what if she could really have it all?
About the Writer
Janice Greenwood is a writer, surfer, and poet. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry and creative writing from Columbia University.