The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel and the Concept of Interdependence

Abstract

This essay delves into the idea of interdependence, its origin, and the role it plays in the biographical comic book The Secret to Superhuman Strength (2021) by Alison Bechdel. According to the artist, this term not only unites Hinduism, Buddhism, escapist literature, transcendentalism, and counterculture, but also helps the author to put together all those personal milestones that ended up composing her own identity as an artist. By doing so, she might want to unveil the hidden truth that she strived so hard to conquer. However, this comic is about that quest and how similar is hers to that of preceding female authors who finally could not reach it. Amongst whom we can count, Margaret Fuller, Dorothy Coleridge, Betty Friedan, Judith Butler, Virginia Woolf; etc.

With her panels, Bechdel vindicates the real importance and the obstacles before reaching the already mentioned interdependence for women artists, activists, explorers, etc., throughout her lifetime and, likewise, during the different feminist waves in the U.S. Concurrently, she is seeking to find that which brings her the superhuman strength.  The way she assumes that in sake of self-determinism she must rage against many restrictions imposed on women living in our western society. Bechdel uses some of those sources to highlight the role of the first intellectuals, their disagreements, and the ongoing values during her chronology. For this, intertextuality, or the dialogue between various texts in Bechdel’s, plays another central role to set women in the Emersonian ideal despite he had other plans for us.