Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness
This sucks, but I told the_red_shoes I'd put it up when I finished it. Gender politics and feminist rage ahoy!
The Question of Sex: Is The Left Hand of Darkness a Feminist Utopia?
The just treatment of all genders is a topic often neglected in utopian fiction, and in Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness the author makes an argument for the shared humanity of all, regardless of what gender a person may or may not have. Her vision of the future is filtered through a misogynist narrator, however, which calls into question how advanced humans are in centuries to come. The societies on Gethen are also not without their own flaws, despite Despite the many positive qualities of the societies on Gethen, however, The Left Hand of Darkness has a distinct vein of pessimism running through it, suggesting that Terran humans are imprinted with our gender roles so deeply that what is possible for the Gethenians will not be possible for us.
The pessimism is most apparent in LeGuin's curiously restrained vision of female emancipation in the future. While women in the Ekumen do have the freedom to travel in space, hold political office, and do other things that would have seemed revolutionary in the 1960's, Genly Ai's consciousness remains unraised. His misogyny is perplexing, as it is unclear whether he is meant to be a flawed, sexist character or whether LeGuin had simply absorbed the prejudices of her time. Given that Ai eventually has an epiphany after spending months together with Estraven, we may assume that at least some of Ai's bias is intended by LeGuin. Forty-two years prior, Ong Tot Oppong instructed the Ekumen, "When you meet a Gethenian you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does, which is to cast him in the role of Man or Woman" (94). Yet this is what Genly Ai does, repeatedly, switching his perspective of Estraven and other Gethenians from "acting like a man" to "acting like a woman" as their behaviour changes. Ai does let go of some of his stereotypical views, but even after meeting Lang Heo Hew and Tulier again and recognising how accustomed he has become to androgyny (296), he persists in categorising the Gethenians according to his ideas of what 'male' and 'female' should be, observing that a young Gethenian "had a girl's quick delicacy in his looks and movements, but no girl could keep so grim a silence as he did" (299). Not even Ai's intimate friendship with a Gethenian has been able to remove his ingrained tendency to label behaviours and appearances according to gender. It is difficult to imagine what would suffice to change Ai's attitudes if the events of the novel were not enough, and from this we can conclude that in Terran humans some things can simply not be changed in one lifetime. LeGuin's choice of a male protagonist in the first place is interesting, given the tradition in feminist utopias of featuring strong female characters. In comparing feminist utopian novels ranging from Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World in 1666 to Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing in 1993, the uniqueness of LeGuin's jaundiced view of gender paradise and her woman-disdaining male protagonist becomes even more marked.
Although the societies on Gethen fall short of being political utopias, they could qualify as feminist utopias, in that on gender issues they approach the ideal of many second-wave feminists at the time of the sexual revolution. As Ong Tot Oppong records in Chapter 7, on Gethen there is complete gender equality, no rape, no war, few sexual taboos (group sex, incest, and prostitution at the kemmer-houses are all permitted, although incestuous couples may not marry), freedom from constraints of childbearing, no sexual frustration or psychosexual issues with parents.
It is interesting that this chapter is the only one in the novel in which we hear a woman's voice, and it is also the one that reveals the most insight into the Gethenians and gender issues. What Genly Ai fails to observe, or sees but takes little interest in, the female observer does see, and takes note. Oppong also suggests what Ai does not: that the reluctance of the Gethenians to make war "may turn out to have nothing to do with their androgyne psychology. There are not very many of them, after all. And there is the climate" (96). This is further evidence that Ai's beliefs about gender are his own, not LeGuin's, since the female character does not share them; she is willing to consider that other factors may influence how a non-male thinks besides gender.
Gender, however, is responsible at least for the elimination of rape and the other explicitly sexual issues mentioned above. While it is easy for men (or anyone whose gender has never caused them difficulties) to dismiss Gethen as a true utopia, women, gays and lesbians, and the transgendered may well be interested in a utopia which does not solve all its problems but has no gender inequality. Although Estraven faces many challenges, es1 problems have their origin not in es gender but in political turmoil, the physical challenge of the environment, the difficulty in relating to an alien being, and one social taboo (which is less of a factor in Estraven's banishment from home than es reputation as a traitor). In the 1960's, and even today, this sort of freedom is sufficient for The Left Hand of Darkness to be labelled as a feminist utopia.
LeGuin's implication is that this is possible for the Gethenians, but humans will not be able to let go of their stereotyped views of gender and gender roles, even if they allow women the same fundamental freedoms as men. That the Gethenians are as free as they are only because they have a unique physiology is significant, and their physiology is not even natural, but an experiment in genetic manipulation (89). Nature, then, is gendered, and gender stereotyping is natural. Biology dictates destiny. Years of scientific and social progress have not eliminated it from Genly Ai, and even Ong Tot Oppong asserts that "a man wants his virility regarded, [and] a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation" (95). "Man" and "woman" are still the only two categories in LeGuin's future, and men still want regard while women want "appreciation" - why would women not want respect as well? Why should femininity not command regard, rather than mere "appreciation"?
The Left Hand of Darkness is a utopian novel in that it portrays a world that is the best, from a perspective that values gender equality highly. However, LeGuin is reluctant to grant that such equality is possible for humans. If she believed it were, there would have been less contrast between the advanced Ekumen's views on gender and those of the Gethenians, or at the very least, Genly Ai's prejudices would have been more amenable to change. Instead, LeGuin presents us with a world where true justice and equality irrespective of gender is possible only for aliens with the right biology.
_____________________
1 In this essay, I have chosen to use the genderless pronouns used by LeGuin herself in the 1994 afterword to The Left Hand of Darkness:
"I use e for a genderless equivalent of he or she; en for her or him; es for her, his, hers; and enself for herself, himself. The pronoun e will probably look to many readers as if it should be pronounced like the letter, rhyming with "see." I pronounce it with the short a sound as in "yet" or "them." Maybe I should have spelt it eh. But a story that kept going eh, eh looked as if it were continually clearing its throat. I started spelling es as ez, but the z's stuck out and made the text look foreign, and what I was striving for was something that didn't look weird, didn't look foreign, looked like and sounded like plain English. Plain Gethenian English."
(Afterword can be found online at http://theliterarylink.com/afterword.html.)
Work Cited
LeGuin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace, 1969.
The Question of Sex: Is The Left Hand of Darkness a Feminist Utopia?
The just treatment of all genders is a topic often neglected in utopian fiction, and in Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness the author makes an argument for the shared humanity of all, regardless of what gender a person may or may not have. Her vision of the future is filtered through a misogynist narrator, however, which calls into question how advanced humans are in centuries to come. The societies on Gethen are also not without their own flaws, despite Despite the many positive qualities of the societies on Gethen, however, The Left Hand of Darkness has a distinct vein of pessimism running through it, suggesting that Terran humans are imprinted with our gender roles so deeply that what is possible for the Gethenians will not be possible for us.
The pessimism is most apparent in LeGuin's curiously restrained vision of female emancipation in the future. While women in the Ekumen do have the freedom to travel in space, hold political office, and do other things that would have seemed revolutionary in the 1960's, Genly Ai's consciousness remains unraised. His misogyny is perplexing, as it is unclear whether he is meant to be a flawed, sexist character or whether LeGuin had simply absorbed the prejudices of her time. Given that Ai eventually has an epiphany after spending months together with Estraven, we may assume that at least some of Ai's bias is intended by LeGuin. Forty-two years prior, Ong Tot Oppong instructed the Ekumen, "When you meet a Gethenian you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does, which is to cast him in the role of Man or Woman" (94). Yet this is what Genly Ai does, repeatedly, switching his perspective of Estraven and other Gethenians from "acting like a man" to "acting like a woman" as their behaviour changes. Ai does let go of some of his stereotypical views, but even after meeting Lang Heo Hew and Tulier again and recognising how accustomed he has become to androgyny (296), he persists in categorising the Gethenians according to his ideas of what 'male' and 'female' should be, observing that a young Gethenian "had a girl's quick delicacy in his looks and movements, but no girl could keep so grim a silence as he did" (299). Not even Ai's intimate friendship with a Gethenian has been able to remove his ingrained tendency to label behaviours and appearances according to gender. It is difficult to imagine what would suffice to change Ai's attitudes if the events of the novel were not enough, and from this we can conclude that in Terran humans some things can simply not be changed in one lifetime. LeGuin's choice of a male protagonist in the first place is interesting, given the tradition in feminist utopias of featuring strong female characters. In comparing feminist utopian novels ranging from Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World in 1666 to Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing in 1993, the uniqueness of LeGuin's jaundiced view of gender paradise and her woman-disdaining male protagonist becomes even more marked.
Although the societies on Gethen fall short of being political utopias, they could qualify as feminist utopias, in that on gender issues they approach the ideal of many second-wave feminists at the time of the sexual revolution. As Ong Tot Oppong records in Chapter 7, on Gethen there is complete gender equality, no rape, no war, few sexual taboos (group sex, incest, and prostitution at the kemmer-houses are all permitted, although incestuous couples may not marry), freedom from constraints of childbearing, no sexual frustration or psychosexual issues with parents.
It is interesting that this chapter is the only one in the novel in which we hear a woman's voice, and it is also the one that reveals the most insight into the Gethenians and gender issues. What Genly Ai fails to observe, or sees but takes little interest in, the female observer does see, and takes note. Oppong also suggests what Ai does not: that the reluctance of the Gethenians to make war "may turn out to have nothing to do with their androgyne psychology. There are not very many of them, after all. And there is the climate" (96). This is further evidence that Ai's beliefs about gender are his own, not LeGuin's, since the female character does not share them; she is willing to consider that other factors may influence how a non-male thinks besides gender.
Gender, however, is responsible at least for the elimination of rape and the other explicitly sexual issues mentioned above. While it is easy for men (or anyone whose gender has never caused them difficulties) to dismiss Gethen as a true utopia, women, gays and lesbians, and the transgendered may well be interested in a utopia which does not solve all its problems but has no gender inequality. Although Estraven faces many challenges, es1 problems have their origin not in es gender but in political turmoil, the physical challenge of the environment, the difficulty in relating to an alien being, and one social taboo (which is less of a factor in Estraven's banishment from home than es reputation as a traitor). In the 1960's, and even today, this sort of freedom is sufficient for The Left Hand of Darkness to be labelled as a feminist utopia.
LeGuin's implication is that this is possible for the Gethenians, but humans will not be able to let go of their stereotyped views of gender and gender roles, even if they allow women the same fundamental freedoms as men. That the Gethenians are as free as they are only because they have a unique physiology is significant, and their physiology is not even natural, but an experiment in genetic manipulation (89). Nature, then, is gendered, and gender stereotyping is natural. Biology dictates destiny. Years of scientific and social progress have not eliminated it from Genly Ai, and even Ong Tot Oppong asserts that "a man wants his virility regarded, [and] a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation" (95). "Man" and "woman" are still the only two categories in LeGuin's future, and men still want regard while women want "appreciation" - why would women not want respect as well? Why should femininity not command regard, rather than mere "appreciation"?
The Left Hand of Darkness is a utopian novel in that it portrays a world that is the best, from a perspective that values gender equality highly. However, LeGuin is reluctant to grant that such equality is possible for humans. If she believed it were, there would have been less contrast between the advanced Ekumen's views on gender and those of the Gethenians, or at the very least, Genly Ai's prejudices would have been more amenable to change. Instead, LeGuin presents us with a world where true justice and equality irrespective of gender is possible only for aliens with the right biology.
_____________________
1 In this essay, I have chosen to use the genderless pronouns used by LeGuin herself in the 1994 afterword to The Left Hand of Darkness:
"I use e for a genderless equivalent of he or she; en for her or him; es for her, his, hers; and enself for herself, himself. The pronoun e will probably look to many readers as if it should be pronounced like the letter, rhyming with "see." I pronounce it with the short a sound as in "yet" or "them." Maybe I should have spelt it eh. But a story that kept going eh, eh looked as if it were continually clearing its throat. I started spelling es as ez, but the z's stuck out and made the text look foreign, and what I was striving for was something that didn't look weird, didn't look foreign, looked like and sounded like plain English. Plain Gethenian English."
(Afterword can be found online at http://theliterarylink.com/afterword.html.)
Work Cited
LeGuin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace, 1969.