51 pages • 1 hour read
Walter TevisThe Queen's Gambit
Walter TevisFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Substance Use as a Response to Anxiety
From a very early age, Beth Harmon struggles with substance use as a way to manage the often intense anxiety and pressure she feels in her chess career and her daily life. In the Methuen orphanage, Beth and the other children receive small green pills twice a day. Beth—who has recently lost her mother and often feels isolated and unsafe at Metheun—immediately recognizes that the tranquilizers ease her anxiety and help her sleep. Soon she begins hoarding them and purposefully taking many at night. When new regulations prevent the orphanage from continuing to distribute the pills, Beth suffers from withdrawals and cannot sleep. When Jolene gives Beth a few extra pills, Beth is relieved, but only until they run out:
Jolene was not in the room, and she was desperate to see Jolene, to see if there were any more pills. Every now and then she touched her blouse pocket with the palm of her hand in a kind of superstitious hope that she would feel the little hard surface of a pill (29).
Beth mechanically and automatically searches for the pills, and she finds that she cannot concentrate on anything else. This is her first of many bouts with addiction in The Queen’s Gambit, and the first time that her need for substances overwhelms other aspects of her life. Her discovery that she depends on the pills is a moment that echoes throughout her career as a chess player. As she rises up the ranks of competitive chess, she finds that the pills work both for and against her. They calm her mind and help her to focus on the game, but they also sometimes cloud her thinking. As she takes more and more, this negative impact becomes more pronounced.
When Beth is a teenager, she supplements her need for tranquilizers with alcohol. When she discovers that alcohol provides a similar sensation to that of the pills, she begins mixing the two and even enters a stage in her life in which she spends most of her days, from sun-up to sun-down, intoxicated. Beth does not initially understand the impact the alcohol and pills have on her until she is invited to a tournament. As she tries to prepare, she realizes that her cognitive abilities are severely impaired: “[S]he started going through the Levenfish Variation of the Sicilian, squinting her eyes and picturing the pieces on an imaginary board. She did the first dozen moves without a mistake, although the pieces didn’t stand out as clearly as they had a year before” (187). The tranquilizers and alcohol blunt Beth’s mind and make it incredibly difficult for her to perform at the high level she is accustomed to. This is the paradox at the heart of Beth’s relationship with chess: The very substances that make it possible for her to play by calming her anxieties also interfere with her playing and ultimately threaten to end her career. After this realization, Beth begins to struggle between her desire for tranquilizers and alcohol and her desire to be a world-class chess player, unbeatable by even the Russians. It is this conflict that defines her journey through much of the novel. In the final chapter, when she travels to Russia to face the seemingly invincible Borgov for a third time, she is so determined to succeed that she stops herself from drinking any alcohol or taking any pills. In the final moments of the match, she sees the board in her mind with a clarity she hasn’t had since her time at Metheun, and she understands how to beat Borgov. The implication is that by trusting herself enough to abstain from drugs and alcohol, she has regained the vision that lies at the core of her talent. The book concludes on a hopeful note, suggesting that she may be able to sustain this new, healthier relationship with chess into the future.
The Constraints of Gender Norms
Throughout The Queen’s Gambit, Beth faces obstacles as a woman trying to break into and dominate a male-dominated field. She frequently confronts and often rages against others’ misguided expectations of her as a female chess player. She finds that the judgment and expectations placed upon her come not only from male players doubting the abilities of women in chess but also through societal norms that ascribe certain qualities to her. Being routinely underestimated frustrates Beth, but it also motivates her. She plays her best when she believes others are counting her out, and she uses their sexist assumptions to her advantage. Frequently, her male opponents are so sure of their superiority that they fail to see the traps she sets for them until it is too late.
Beth becomes accustomed to facing sexism in chess, the looks of rage and disdain on thwarted opponent’s faces a common sight. However, when she confronts the constraints of gender norms in her everyday life, with people she believed she could trust, her rage amplifies. While Beth is living with Benny, Benny goes to a poker game, explaining to Beth that she cannot play: “‘This one’s all men.’ She frowned. ‘I’ve heard that said about chess.’ ‘I bet you have. You can come along and watch if you want to. But you’ll have to keep quiet’” (169). Beth reminds Benny that this sentiment of no women allowed is a common echo in their shared field of chess, but Benny does not sympathize. When Beth follows him to the game and watches it unfold, seeing a poker game for the first time, she becomes confident that she could dominate this game just as she does chess. However, the societal expectations that women are either not as good at such games or should not be allowed to play hinder her potential.
As much pleasure as she takes in embarrassing those who underestimate her, Beth also longs to be appreciated for her brilliance and not only for her gender. When she is interviewed after winning a tournament, Beth finds herself frustrated by the reporter’s emphasis on her being a girl: “‘But it’s mostly about my being a girl...It shouldn’t be that important,’ Beth said. ‘They didn’t print half the things I told them. They didn’t tell about Mr. Shaibel. They didn’t say anything about how I play the Sicilian’” (95). Beth wants and expects the world to treat her like the brilliant chess player she is. She believes chess should be the focus of others’ discussions of her. However, in many interviews, reporters ask her about what it is like to be a woman in chess, facing all the men, or if she has a boyfriend. Even other girls at school lose interest in her career when she tells them she does not try to date the boys who are her opponents. Beth’s response to this pattern is to throw herself more deeply into the game, believing that only by becoming the best chess player in the world can she escape the reductive label of “best woman chess player.” She does finally achieve this goal with her defeat of Borgov in Russia, but the real transformation comes not from this victory but from her immersion in the Russian chess culture. Here, she finds herself at last among people who value chess above anything else and who see her first and foremost as a brilliant player.
From Self-Doubt to Self-Reliance
At different times in the novel, Beth struggles with self-doubt, both in her appearance and in her skill at chess. She is routinely underestimated and dismissed, and at times she allows the prejudices of others to undermine her self-esteem. Only by claiming agency and carefully forging her own path can she overcome self-doubt.
Beth’s struggles with self-doubt begin at an early age, as she watches younger and purportedly prettier children at the orphanage being adopted over her. As she grows up, Beth often criticizes her own appearance:
Sometimes when Beth saw herself in the mirror of the girls’ room between classes, with her straight brown hair and narrow shoulders and round face with dull brown eyes and freckles across the bridge of her nose, she would taste the old taste of vinegar in her mouth (52).
Beth has a visceral, physical reaction to the displeasure she finds in her appearance, as it reminds her of those childhood years in which she was led to believe that she was too ugly to be loved. She compares herself to the girls in her class in the Apple Pi Club, understanding that she does not fit the club’s narrow definition of beauty. As she matures, however, she learns that she does not need to meet someone else’s standard. She finds the Apple Pi girls dull in their conformity, and she experiments with clothes, makeup, and hairstyles until she finds a style all her own
Similarly, as she grows older and establishes herself as a chess player, Beth’s self-confidence grows, even if her confidence in her skills sometimes wavers. Beth suffers a crisis of faith in her chess abilities when she fails to best her Russian opponent Borgov. Borgov, like many of the Russian players, enjoys the support of the Soviet government as he devotes his life to chess. Beth sees him as nearly superhuman, an infallible talent on the chess board. Beth has based her identity on her ability to best any opponent, and her loss to Borgov destabilizes her sense of self to such a degree that it drives her toward heavy substance use. When she sees him again in Russia, she finds him conferring with other Russian grandmasters, and she realizes that his talent is supported by institutional foundations she will never be able to access: “But all of it was meaningless and trivial beside her glimpse into the establishment of Russian chess, into the room where the men conferred in deep voices and studied the board with an assurance that seemed wholly beyond her” (227). This image of a secret room in which men confer in deep voices reminds Beth of the many times she has felt excluded from the inner sanctums of the chess world because of her gender. Now that she has reached the pinnacle of the game, she confronts an additional obstacle: Even though she is the best chess player in the US, her country offers nothing like the governmental support that the USSR offers to its best players. Confronting these structural obstacles, Beth believes she has encountered a challenge she cannot overcome. The call from Benny makes her realize that she has a support network too, even if hers is less institutionalized and less formal. Her confidence buoyed by the realization that she has once again forged her own path, she goes on to defeat Borgov.
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