Ursula K. Le Guin: A Feminist Analysis

“We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.” (Le Guin, “A Quote”) During the 1960’s and 1970’s, America was experiencing the second wave of the feminist movement. This movement coincided with the postmodern movement in literature. Postmodernism is a late-20th century movement of literature which is marked by a reliance on literary conventions such as fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators, often unrealistic and impossible plots, games, parody, paranoia, dark humor and authorial self-reference. Ursula K. Le Guin was a figurehead of feminist science fiction. The feminist movement inspired Le Guin’s work which even has an impact on today’s modern society

Le Guin”, was written as a collaboration between Karen Carmean and Donna Glee Williams. Le Guin uses Taoist thought in The Left Hand of Darkness to bring themes she’s previously used together to form a striking metaphor. The main character, Genly Ai must come to see the relativity of truth. To do so, he has to overcome barriers he was first incapable of recognizing and is still reluctant to cross. He must become aware that that “truth is a matter of the imagination.” (Carmean & Williams, Ursula). His difficulty is complicated by his outsider existence on the planet of Genthen, where he is a sexual anomaly as far as the natives are concerned. Being a male in an androgynous culture adds immeasurably to Ai’s sense of distrust, for he cannot bring himself to trust “a man who is a woman, a woman who is a man.” (Carmean & Williams, Ursula). The theme of androgyny enhances the novel as it develops the complex results of an androgynous culture, but also demonstrates how gender affects thought and explores the cultural effects of such a bias. At first, Ai can see only one gender at a time. This limited vision leaves him vulnerable to betrayal, both by himself and by others. His experiences on Genthen teach him the apparently polarized qualities of light/dark and male/female are necessary complements as the order of the universe needs both. The book consolidates Taoist ideas expressed in Le Guin’s previous work, places them in a unique culture, and develops them greater than conveyed in her earlier novels. Ai discovers a fuller recognition of self through merger with the other. He does so in a much more complete way because Le Guin complicates The Left Hand of Darkness with themes of opposing political systems, the nature and consequences of sexism, the issue of personal and political loyalty, and the interrelatedness of different periods of time. Carmean and Williams have an understanding of Le Guin’s writing style and commonalities