Gender In The Left Hand Of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness was a novel I expected to be very different than what it was. As I interpreted it, the novum of the story was a thought experiment of an androgynous society. Furthermore, I think what Le Guin was saying by choosing this particular novum is best explained in the Cambridge Companion in which it states, “Le Guin confronts the question of socialised versus biological difference...in this society, ‘humanity’ is defined as a commonly accessible and shared set of values, attributes and behaviors tangibly separated from arbitrary and shifting notions of the self-based only on a sex embodiment” (247). Le Guin wanted to challenge not only how gender is perceived/developed socially but also the biological roles that play into defining gender. Based off this, I was truly looking forward to learning how this society acted, governed itself, and was overall different than the society we live in today.

The novel helped to open the discussion of gender but to my disappointment didn’t so much break down how the reader originally thought about gender.

I contribute this to the fact that the pronoun ‘he’ was used throughout the novel. I believe this underwhelming reaction was felt by the author herself after reading her confession in the Cambridge Companion, “Le Guin herself later admitted, her use of the masculine pronoun to refer to the Gethenians allows their society to be read as all-male: ‘a safe trip into androgyny and back, from a conventionally male viewpoint’ “(247). Besides that, I do think Le Guin pushed the reader to think outside of the “normal” social constructs of the real world and I think she tackled a topic that is too hard for one novel to answer. Gender in sf alone is something that is still typically male dominated so any break or challenge to this inequality is appreciated and interesting. Yet, besides the new way of viewing gender how does the novel reflect the historical moment in which it was

written?
I think the most prominent way the novel reflects the time period of the late 1960’s is through its numerous correlations to the Cold War. It is first seen in the two opposing countries of Karhide and Orgoreyn who are about to engage in a war. The Cold War aspect in the novel is literally seen by the fact that Karhide and Orgoreyn would have been fighting an actual cold war. As the planet of Gethen was entering a new ice age and was a harsh, bitter, and tension filled environment. There were also multiple references to the communist Soviet Union, which was seen in the governing nature of Orgoreyn which was led by a communal rule. Not only was everyone in Orgoreyn all given state appointed jobs and houses but everyone started out equal from birth, “No child over a year old lives with its parent or parents; all are brought up in the Commensal Hearths. There is no rank by descent. Private wills are not legal: a man dying leaves his fortune to the state. All start equal” (115). With that being said, what really sold me that Orgoreyn reflected the Cold War and more specifically the Soviet Union was the fact that they sent people such as Genly Ai to labor camps, “there was no infirmary. The principle of the Farm was work or die” (179). After researching the Soviet labor camps, I found that not only was it a repressive system but it was also conducted in this atrocious manner, “the arrests, the interrogations, the transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labor, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths” (Victims). The fact that Genly Ai was taking to the camp in an unheated car, faced ruthless interrogations, and everyone was repressed sexually from kemmer is what I found to be direct evidence that Orgoreyn labor farms paralleled the Soviet Union labor camps. In all, The Left Hand of Darkness which wasn’t the perfect gender story helped to open up the generations of the late 1960’s to a new perspective not only on the topic of gender but of the Cold War and Soviet Union as well.