Understanding the concept of Power allows readers to investigate unequal power relationships in texts between characters. Reading with a lens of power allows you to include information around the context of the reader, the audience and the context of the story itself.
Power is the ability to influence people.
Power involves conflict.
Power presupposes resistance.
To understand how power works in society we have two models that we use. The Hegemonic model and the Pluralistic model.
Hegemonic Model:
The word hegemony comes from ancient Greek hegemonia meaning "leadership rule". It denotes domination by the empowered group: the elite in society decide what ideas dominate in the public sphere. Hegemony is a term that comes out of Marxist philosophy, that describes the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society such as the beliefs, values and mores of that society.
Marxist philosophy (named after Karl Marx) is a social, economic and political theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change. It examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favour of communism.
Communism is the opposite of capitalism which is the "means and ownership of the production and distribution of goods motivated by profit and with a free market".
Pluralistic Model:
Pluralism is the exact the opposite of hegemony. In this model, every choice and idea within society is given a chance to be voiced. This allows society to be diverse. In such diversity we then have society which has power and influences the diversity of choices in education, knowledge and literature.