Gender and sexuality
Gender and sexuality are prominent themes in a number of Le Guin's works. The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, was among the first books in the genre now known as feminist science fiction, and is the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction.[138] The story is set on the fictional planet of Gethen, whose inhabitants are ambisexual humans with no fixed gender identity, who adopt female or male sexual characteristics for brief periods of their sexual cycle.[139] Which sex they adopt can depend on context and relationships.[140] Gethen was portrayed as a society without war, as a result of this absence of fixed gender characteristics, and also without sexuality as a continuous factor in social relationships.[55][139] Gethenian culture was explored in the novel through the eyes of a Terran, whose masculinity proves a barrier to cross-cultural communication.[55] Outside the Hainish Cycle, Le Guin's use of a female protagonist in The Tombs of Atuan, published in 1971, was described as a "significant exploration of womanhood".[141]
Le Guin at a reading in Danville, California (June 2008)Le Guin's attitude towards gender and feminism evolved considerably over time.[142] Although The Left Hand of Darkness was seen as a landmark exploration of gender, it also received criticism for not going far enough. Reviewers pointed to its usage of masculine gender pronouns to describe its androgynous characters,[54] the lack of androgynous characters portrayed in stereotypical feminine roles,[143] and the portrayal of heterosexuality as the norm on Gethen.[144] Le Guin's portrayal of gender in Earthsea was also described as perpetuating the notion of a male-dominated world; according to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "Le Guin saw men as the actors and doers in the [world], while women remain the still centre, the well from which they drink".[41][145][146] Le Guin initially defended her writing; in a 1976 essay "Is Gender Necessary?" she wrote that gender was secondary to the primary theme of loyalty in The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin revisited this essay in 1988, and acknowledged that gender was central to the novel;[54] she also apologized for depicting Gethenians solely in heterosexual relationships.[144]
Le Guin responded to these critiques in her subsequent writing. She intentionally used feminine pronouns for all sexually latent Gethenians in her 1995 short story "Coming of Age in Karhide", and in a later reprinting of "Winter's King", which was first published in 1969.[143][147][148] "Coming of Age in Karhide" was later anthologized in the 2002 collection The Birthday of the World, which contained six other stories featuring unorthodox sexual relationships and marital arrangements.[90] She also revisited gender relations in Earthsea in Tehanu, published in 1990.[149] This volume was described as a rewriting or reimagining of The Tombs of Atuan, because the power and status of the female protagonist Tenar are the inverse of what they were in the earlier book, which was also focused on her and Ged.[150] During this later period she commented that she considered The Eye of the Heron, published in 1978, to be her first work genuinely centered on a woman.[151]
Moral development
Le Guin explores coming of age, and moral development more broadly, in many of her writings.[152] This is particularly the case in those works written for a younger audience, such as Earthsea and Annals of the Western Shore. Le Guin wrote in a 1973 essay that she chose to explore coming-of-age in Earthsea since she was writing for an adolescent audience: "Coming of age ... is a process that took me many years; I finished it, so far as I ever will, at about age thirty-one; and so I feel rather deeply about it. So do most adolescents. It's their main occupation, in fact."[153] She also said that fantasy was best suited as a medium for describing coming of age, because exploring the subconscious was difficult using the language of "rational daily life".[153][154]
The first three Earthsea novels together follow Ged from youth to old age, and each of them also follow the coming of age of a different character.[155] A Wizard of Earthsea focuses on Ged's adolescence, while The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore explore that of Tenar and the prince Arren, respectively.[156][125] A Wizard of Earthsea is frequently described as a Bildungsroman,[157][158] in which Ged's coming of age is intertwined with the physical journey he undertakes through the novel.[159] To Mike Cadden the book was a convincing tale "to a reader as young and possibly as headstrong as Ged, and therefore sympathetic to him".[158] Reviewers have described the ending of the novel, wherein Ged finally accepts the shadow as a part of himself, as a rite of passage. Scholar Jeanne Walker writes that the rite of passage at the end was an analogue for the entire plot of A Wizard of Earthsea, and that the plot itself plays the role of a rite of passage for an adolescent reader.[160][161]
Each volume of Annals of the Western Shore also describes the coming of age of its protagonists,[162] and features explorations of being enslaved to one's own power.[162][163] The process of growing up is depicted as seeing beyond narrow choices the protagonists are presented with by society. In Gifts, Orrec and Gry realize that the powers their people possess can be used in two ways: for control and dominion, or for healing and nurturing. This recognition allows them to take a third choice, and leave.[164] This wrestling with choice has been compared to the choices the characters are forced to make in Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".[164] Similarly, Ged helps Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan to value herself and to find choices that she did not see,[165][166] leading her to leave the Tombs with him.[167]
Political systems
Alternative social and political systems are a recurring theme in Le Guin's writing.[6][168] Critics have paid particular attention to The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home,[168] although Le Guin explores related themes in a number of her works,[168] such as in "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas".[169] The Dispossessed is an anarchist utopian novel, which according to Le Guin drew from pacifist anarchists, including Peter Kropotkin, as well as from the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.[104] Le Guin has been credited with "[rescuing] anarchism from the cultural ghetto to which it has been consigned", and helping to bring it into the intellectual mainstream.[170] Fellow author Kathleen Ann Goonan wrote that Le Guin's work confronted the "paradigm of insularity toward the suffering of people, other living beings, and resources", and explored "life-respecting sustainable alternatives".[6]
The Dispossessed, set on the twin planets of Urras and Anarres, features a planned anarchist society depicted as an "ambiguous utopia". The society, created by settlers from Urras, is materially poorer than the wealthy society of Urras, but more ethically and morally advanced.[171] Unlike classical utopias, the society of Anarres is portrayed as neither perfect nor static; the protagonist Shevek finds himself traveling to Urras to pursue his research. Nonetheless, the misogyny and hierarchy present in the authoritarian society of Urras is absent among the anarchists, who base their social structure on cooperation and individual liberty.[171] The Eye of the Heron, published a few years after The Dispossessed, was described as continuing Le Guin's exploration of human freedom, through a conflict between two societies of opposing philosophies: a town inhabited by descendants of pacifists, and a city inhabited by descendants of criminals.[172]
Always Coming Home, set in California in the distant future, examines a warlike society, resembling contemporary American society, from the perspective of the Kesh, its pacifist neighbors. The society of the Kesh has been identified by scholars as a feminist utopia, which Le Guin uses to explore the role of technology.[173] Scholar Warren Rochelle stated that it was "neither a matriarchy nor a patriarchy: men and women just are".[174] "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", a parable depicting a society in which widespread wealth, happiness, and security, comes at the cost of the continued misery of a single child, has also been read as a critique of contemporary American society.[175][176] The Word for World is Forest explored the manner in which the structure of society affects the natural environment; in the novel, the natives of the planet of Athshe have adapted their way of life to the ecology of the planet.[60] The colonizing human society, in contrast, is depicted as destructive and uncaring; in depicting it, Le Guin also critiqued colonialism and imperialism, driven partly by her disapproval for U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War.[59][60][177]
Other social structures are examined in works such as the story cycle Four Ways to Forgiveness, and the short story "Old Music and the Slave Women", occasionally described as a "fifth way to forgiveness". [178] Set in the Hainish universe, the five stories together examine revolution and reconstruction in a slave-owning society.[179][180] According to Rochelle, the stories examine a society that has the potential to build a "truly human community", made possible by the Ekumen's recognition of the slaves as human beings, thus offering them the prospect of freedom and the possibility of utopia, brought about through revolution.[181] Slavery, justice, and the role of women in society are also explored in Annals of the Western Shore.[182][183]
