As I mentioned in my earlier post, LHoD left me with several thoughts/musings. The one that really stuck with me was how she treated gender.
"My landlady, a voluble man..." (pg. 38) starts chapter 4 of LHoD. Even before we've gotten that far, Le Guin has used an overabundance of man pronouns, despite her narrator's hesitance to do so. As a reader, I then become prone to thinking about all of the characters I meet as males, not the strange combination of hermaphrodite and androgen that the citizens of Gethen are. (Note: apparently, in one of Le Guin's short stories about the Gethenians, she changed all of the pronouns to "she." I think it would be really interesting to read that story and see how my reactions are different.) Whenever Le Guin brings out the "feminine" side of her characters, I find myself questioning about whether or not what they just did was enough to classify them as female, instead of male.
I guess what I'm really objecting to is Genly's classification of "male" actions and "female" actions. Betrayal is not a female-exclusive thing, in my mind, and neither is non-violence. Hm.
It would be very interesting to ask Le Guin what exactly she was trying to get across with the gender-ambiguity of LHoD. Are the views that Genly express ones that Le Guin hold herself, or just something she was just using? She doesn't explore gender differences very deeply, given the fact that the entire book is about a population where gender doesn't truly exist.
Now, that's an interesting idea. In Gethenian culture, does gender not exist, or are both genders represented in everyone? My personal opinions tend more towards the latter.
All in all, I loved Genly's reaction when his compatriots finally arrive on Gethen. Just another example of Le Guin's writing prowess. And I really want to read the short stories she's written about other Gethenians. My favourite parts of the book were the little snippets told from other people's point of view or taken from mythology.
-J
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I wonder if those short stories would explain Le Guin's thoughts on the genderless society more. The Left Hand of Darkness seems to leave you hanging as far as what happens after the ship comes and there are both genders present and not just Genly.
As I read this, I imagined the society calling men men more out of convenience than anything else really. I mean, imagine a place where you have to call every person you see by "they, it, ...abiguous?" It would get confusing fast (at least for us strange two (/three four) gender species, but at least a species without the capacity for change.
Alas, I have no more input on this subject, so I leave you with a pearl of wisdom blogger just handed to me.
"Ponwedi"
Post a Comment