The Left Hand of Darkness
I have a weird relationship with Ursula K Le Guin's work. I feel like
I'm supposed to like her more than I actually do. Not that I actively
dislike her. But I always find myself disagreeing with her about
something fundamental. As beautiful as her prose tends to be, and as
forward-thinking and progressive as many of her ideas are, we just seem
to be coming from different places. I think it boils down to the fact
that she's espousing feminist ideas from a generation or two ago, and
they simply aren't radical enough to interest me.
The Left Hand of Darkness does some interesting things with gender by essentially getting rid of it in all but on character and making that one character undeniably alien. A more strange stranger in a stranger land than anything Heinlein ever conceived. And to an extent it's interesting to see this alien, Genly Ai, continuously project gender onto everyone around him.
It makes sense. As the book points out the very first thing we want to know about anyone is are they a boy or a girl. It's the first question asked of new babies. When we're out in public and confronted with someone androgynous, we tend to become uncomfortable. How do we interact with someone we can't classify? And it's also nice to see the narrative constantly flummox him. To learn that the "landlady" he views as matronly has fathered children but never borne them. To watch another character shift fluidly between masculine and feminine characteristics.
But then she goes and argues that women (from planets with men and women) tend to not be mathemeticians or politicians or whatever because they're so focused on child-bearing and child-rearing and I find myself disappointed that she couldn't carry this thought-experiment one step further. Then she can imagine a racially diverse and harmonious future where ESP is taught as a second language, that she can come up with an entire society that is genderless and to some extent sexless, but that she can't imagine a society where the contributions of women are equal to the contributions of men. Where men take an equal part in child-rearing and women are free to pursue interests outside of the home.
Maybe this is why I fell so hard and fast for Bujold, with her uterine replicators and parenting tests. Though it must be said that she's not perfect either. Then again, who is?
Back to this book. I struggled with the first two thirds of The Left Hand of Darkness. There's a lot of alien terminology thrown around, and I had a hard time keeping track of it all. I found a breakdown of the calendar in the back of the book, and I would have liked a glossary as well.
That said, it did eventually fall into place. The last third of the book was fantastic. It helped that it shoved our two protagonists out onto a glacier for several months. Fighting for survival and learning more about each other as their boundaries are eventually eroded by the harsh conditions. The monotony of their journey, which magnifies their setbacks and successes is a great backdrop for their burgeoning friendship. I just wish it hadn't taken quite so long to get there.
The Left Hand of Darkness does some interesting things with gender by essentially getting rid of it in all but on character and making that one character undeniably alien. A more strange stranger in a stranger land than anything Heinlein ever conceived. And to an extent it's interesting to see this alien, Genly Ai, continuously project gender onto everyone around him.
It makes sense. As the book points out the very first thing we want to know about anyone is are they a boy or a girl. It's the first question asked of new babies. When we're out in public and confronted with someone androgynous, we tend to become uncomfortable. How do we interact with someone we can't classify? And it's also nice to see the narrative constantly flummox him. To learn that the "landlady" he views as matronly has fathered children but never borne them. To watch another character shift fluidly between masculine and feminine characteristics.
But then she goes and argues that women (from planets with men and women) tend to not be mathemeticians or politicians or whatever because they're so focused on child-bearing and child-rearing and I find myself disappointed that she couldn't carry this thought-experiment one step further. Then she can imagine a racially diverse and harmonious future where ESP is taught as a second language, that she can come up with an entire society that is genderless and to some extent sexless, but that she can't imagine a society where the contributions of women are equal to the contributions of men. Where men take an equal part in child-rearing and women are free to pursue interests outside of the home.
Maybe this is why I fell so hard and fast for Bujold, with her uterine replicators and parenting tests. Though it must be said that she's not perfect either. Then again, who is?
Back to this book. I struggled with the first two thirds of The Left Hand of Darkness. There's a lot of alien terminology thrown around, and I had a hard time keeping track of it all. I found a breakdown of the calendar in the back of the book, and I would have liked a glossary as well.
That said, it did eventually fall into place. The last third of the book was fantastic. It helped that it shoved our two protagonists out onto a glacier for several months. Fighting for survival and learning more about each other as their boundaries are eventually eroded by the harsh conditions. The monotony of their journey, which magnifies their setbacks and successes is a great backdrop for their burgeoning friendship. I just wish it hadn't taken quite so long to get there.
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