Narcissist Fathers and Powered Daughters: Examining Narcissism and Gender in N. K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate

In examining the father-daughter relationship through a lens of critical kinship studies, it is necessary to incorporate the broad analysis of patriarchal systems to understand the ways that power dynamics are reiterated in the small-scale space of the family. Adding narcissism into that power dynamic, understanding the cultivation of narcissistic behavior in fathers through the encouragement of a sexist system that is designed to uphold those behaviors, further complicates the way that power, abuse, and trauma are communicated across father-daughter relationship lines. N. K. Jemisin's novel, The Obelisk Gate, the second book of the Broken Earth series, depicts the intricacies of this father-daughter relationship and, I argue, acts as a fantastical metaphor for the clash of patriarchal and matriarchal power and the desire of narcissistic father-figures to dismantle the matriarchal power in ways that necessarily pushes the daughter back into a gender-oppressive system to sustain his own view of reality. Using the relationship between Jija and Nassun in The Obelisk Gate, I seek to reconcile the raw trauma of Nassun's experience with the reality of personal trauma as a narcissistic-abuse survivor, to show the ways that narcissism and patriarchy in Jemisin's work intertwine to embody the impact of modern systematic oppressions on small-scale family kinship and relationships.

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