The Emancipation of Claire Underwood
What’s behind her struggle for power?
[Spoiler Alert: This post contains many spoilers from the third season of House of Cards.]
Fresh from binge-watching the whole third season of House of Cards throughout last weekend, I was struck with an epiphany. All along, behind the façades of Francis Underwood’s cutthroat power play that led him to the presidential throne, the series is moving to a new direction: Now it is about Claire and her struggle to be as powerful as, if not more than, her husband.
If you are listening to their private dialogues — in the bedroom before sleep, in the kitchen during breakfast, while sharing a cigarette inside the Oval Room — they always consider each other as an equal strong-willed partner. But on the eye of outsiders, be it a Middle American or an iron-fisted Russian president, Claire is, more often than not, relegated to the position of a prop for Frank’s power-mongering business.
To be fair, Claire has been an extremely successful woman in her own right: leading the nonprofit Clear Water Initiative (sometimes brusquely — remember that pregnant lady?), pushing an anti-rape bill in the Congress, and initiating many other applaudable policy-related programs.
But once the Underwoods get a new residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, what can Claire do now as the First Lady? Hosting state dinners? Picking Easter eggs? She wants more and, taking cues from Eleanor Roosevelt, she is determined to be the next US Ambassador to the United Nations. Even though Claire fails the Congressional nomination hearings, after some string-pullings by Frank, she manages to make it to New York. Nepotistic? Maybe.
However, as she deftly negotiates with her global counterparts about pressing international security matters, they always refer to Frank as “your husband” — something that truly frustrates her. She wants to serve her country, and yet Frank is always soaring on the background. (He is the president, after all.)
Throughout season 3, Claire’s cold Lady Macbeth-ian surface slowly melts away. After the arrested American gay activist commits suicide in his Russian prison cell, she objects to President Viktor Petrov’s anti-gay propaganda in a speech right in front of his face — in the process, jeopardizing a crucial deal between the two countries. Then, during the 2016 presidential campaign trail, she reveals to the biographer Tom Yates about how she feels about her marriage before skipping altogether her husband’s victory speech in Iowa.
In the chilling last episode of season 3, after a long quarrel, Claire finally says it loud and clear to Frank: “It’s you that is not enough.” And with that, she leaves her husband.
There are many signs as to what Claire will do next; the most obvious — and clichéd — one is running for president. She is entirely free now to pursue her every predilection and whim, after all.
But whatever route she plans to take, the remaining question is still the same: Can the Underwoods survive without each other?
