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some extremely scattered thoughts about earthsea
Last week, I finished my Earthsea reread and I have Thoughts. These thoughts are not presented in a well-crafted way--this is not anything approaching an essay. Maybe one day I will learn to craft my Thoughts into something admirable, but that doesn't seem to be my DW style. So here's just a bunch of things the books made me think about.
As I mentioned, I haven't read the series since high school, and my memory of it was that it was kind of...slight. My memory was wrong. The books are short, yes. But there is nothing else slight about them. There is so much going on, so much food for thought. I'm honestly shocked I have so much to say about them, but the stuff I'm talking about here is only a little portion of all the things that are present in the series as a whole. There's really nothing else like it.
One of the most immediately noticeable aspects of the series, a thing that sets it apart, is that it feels mythic. A lot of writers attempt to create that feeling, but most don't fully succeed. Le Guin does. Her writing in these books feels like less novels than like the kind of stories you'd be told by an old woman on the other side of a winter fire--you feel like the story's being told to you, not that you're experiencing the story through a character's eyes. This makes them less novels, in my mind, than written-down prose-epics.
It also explains why I wasn't super crazy about them as a high schooler reading them for the first time. I liked them! But I am the kind of person who generally likes a deep-dive into the minds of characters when I read. I just love the novel form, okay! And I think I was especially into it at as teenager. Now as an adult, I do in general prefer that kind of writing, but I am able to appreciate the storytelling approach, especially when it's done as perfectly as Le Guin does it.
Her worldbuilding has a mythic feeling, too. She evokes a deep past without expositioning. Things feel very...mythic (I keep using that word, but I can't not use it!) in a way that I feel like Jung and Joseph Campbell are trying to get to, but they turn it into something annoying. With Le Guin it feels natural. The power of names, the idea of balance, the hero's journey--these become fresh and new in her capable hands.
One thing I most enjoy about the series is watching Le Guin's evolution on multiple levels. There's the fact that the worldbuilding and characterization deepen as each book goes along--and not just in the way that all worldbuilding and characterization deepen as we get more pages. But Le Guin is clearly fleshing things out in ways she never considered when she began writing; for instance, she clearly didn't know when she wrote Wizard that the rest of the sweep of the series would end up being about overthrowing the status quo of the world, especially in regards to gender.
Which is another way her thinking evolves: it's so easy to see that the things she wrote in the first book started to bother her later. Only men can be wizards and learn magic formally? Why? That's profoundly unjust. So she starts to answer not only "How did this happen?" but also "How can we dismantle it?" I mean, in one sense, the series is really about dismantling the patriarchy--but also about how the patriarchy wasn't the way things were in the past, even if people assume it was. Like, the lore of Earthsea shows that once magic was egalitarian and that the school on Roke itself was founded by more women than men. The patriarchy built up over time, mostly because individual men wanted power and others went along with them. Tied to that is an idea of the Dark Times when magic became suspect--and women's magic especially. Like, of course when they're searching for a scapegoat they're going to settle on women.
And the emphasis is on how the world is out of balance and needs to be set right. People striving for power--over other people, over death--always throw the world wildly out of balance and result in tragedy and violence. The seeds of that are absolutely in the first book when Ged, in his pride, sets lose a shadow that will chase him to the ends of the earth if he doesn't confront it. But that's a personal story, as is The Tombs of Atuan. Starting with The Farthest Shore, the scope widens and we see that all of Earthsea is being affected by these things. Books 3-6 tie it explicitly to the issue of sexism and also forgotten history.
In the decades between writing the first book and writing the second trilogy, she also rethought her own worldbuilding. It's clear that she begin to think, "Why did I design a world in which the afterlife looks like that? I don't like what that says about either life or death!" And instead of retconning, as some would, or just going with it, as others would, she...added books that made the entire series about how that afterlife was wrong. And tied it to the human tendency of trying to control things we shouldn't control (death, other people). It works so well!
The Wizard of Earthsea is, honestly, probably my least favorite of the books, even though it's lovely. I can only imagine what it felt like reading it in the 60s/70s and not just because the protagonists are brown. But even though the prose has more of a story-telling quality than that of a novel, it's still more character-driven than a lot of fantasy because the plot is driven by Ged's choices. You've got this punk-ass kid with a ton of talent and latent power, and he's really unlikable at the beginning! Not a lot of writers would risk that! He becomes truly lovable--and admirable, a truly good man--over the course of the series, and I do love that.
The plot starts out pretty straightforwardly with him going to the wizard school to learn. But then he does something really stupid and driven by his own pride, and it literally invites darkness into the world. And the rest of the book is him trying to set it right again. This is not an outside journey imposed on a chosen one. This is a story about a person learning to use their talents appropriately and also how to accept responsibility for their actions.
The prose is simple and clear and beautiful. Le Guin has such a way of conveying setting/nature in just a few short words. This kind of thing is much harder than it looks, but Le Guin makes it look very easy.
But it's still a boy hero coming-of-age story. A non-white spin on that was deeply needed when it was written, but it's always going to be fundamentally less appealing to me than the more female-centric books.
The Tombs of Atuan is suffused with a sense of...gosh, I don't even know what word I want to use here. The feeling is huge and shadowy and it hovers over us as readers as much as it does over Tenar. I can't even verbalize what kind of atmosphere Le Guin evokes, only that it's potent and I can't compare its flavor to anything else I've read. It's as deep as the darkness of the Tombs.
Again, Le Guin doesn't care about making her protagonist likeable. I mean, I think Tenar is deeply sympathetic--so very lonely and alone. But she does a lot of uncaring things, especially at the beginning. A different writer would have made her a plucky heroine who we can immediately root for instead of a twisted little girl. I love how prickly Tenar is, how self-absorbed. How could she be otherwise?
And I looooooove a book about having your worldview shattered. Ged walks into her life and overturns everything she's ever known. It's terrifying and exciting in equal measure. Tenar makes choices, and more choices, and changes her mind, and ultimately decides to trust another person--something she's clearly never done.
I like the eerie, haunted sense of mysticism. I like that main theme is, "No one ever becomes free by themself." It's a haunting book, in the best way.
I wasn't thrilled when I picked up The Farthest Shore for this reread. I was like, "Oh, another boy's adventure." But I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would! The worldbuilding is fun--I especially love the Sea People and frankly could have spent an entire book with them! It's interesting that for the first time, we have an antagonist that we don't really know. But we don't need to know him. He isn't important. What's important is the desire that drives him--the desire to live forever. Le Guin thinks this is deeply evil, and it's this desire that many people have that is the real enemy.
The descriptions here are especially lovely--I love the way she writes about the sea. I like Arren, and I'm not even bothered by the whole Chosen King thing. He becomes the appropriate person to be king through his actions, even though his birthright does play into it. I normally dislike monarchy being portrayed as a good thing, but it works in this series because of the idea of the mythic feel that is present in so many cultures: the good king being the embodiment of order and a healthy society. Plus, she problematizes it in the last book by introducing an entire council that he consults about every major decision (and it seems they even have veto-power!).
Tehanu is, imo, the stand-out book of the series. I literally can't think of another fantasy novel that is so focused on women and women's work in this specific way. McKinley has some notes of this in her work, but no body does it full-on the way Le Guin does. She's never had patience for the kind of "feminist" text that says that women need to do traditionally male things in order to be important. She wants to make the things that have traditionally been women's work as important as men's work, and she is unapologetic about this.
It's so unexpected--we're revisiting Tenar and we find that though she had the option to study magic with Ogion, an option that almost no other woman in Earthsea has ever had, she chooses instead to become a wife and a mother. And the narrative never, ever judges her for this! What other writer would do that?
Later, we get women who do decide to do the men's work of magic, and they are right and good, too. But Tenar, who has always been set apart, decides to enter fully into the world of normal women. And so we get a book that's about a middle-aged widow and her small--but never unimportant--struggles that ultimately aren't exactly small, either.
There are dragons. The dragons are important to the story. But the rest of the story is just...Tenar trying to live her life, and Therru/Tehanu trying to figure out how to live hers, and Ged trying to build a new life of a kind he'd never learned how to live before. There's an evil sorcerer, but he isn't the kind of evil that wants to overthrow the world--he's the kind of evil who wants to get revenge on a woman who doesn't defer to him. It's about his ego on a small scale. It's about the kind of control abusive people--mostly abusive men--want to have over the people in their lives.
This kind of lust for control leads to Therru/Tehanu being horribly, horribly hurt. It leads to this wizard becoming obsessed with teaching Tenar her "place." It leads to this wizard hating Ged, too, because Ged is a man who sees women as equal and so he must also be punished.
The book asks, "Why do men hate women? Why are they scared of women?" And so, as a consequence, "Why do they hurt women?" It doesn't provide an answer (Moss's monologue about men and magic is not, I believe, an answer, but simply one perspective). But I can't think of many works of speculative fiction that bother to ask that question at all. I appreciate that Le Guin was wise enough to know that there is no simple answer and so she doesn't try to provide one. Instead she says, how is it possible to live in a world in which men hate, fear, and hurt women?
Of course Not All Men. Le Guin knows that. So we have Ogion, who is just the loveliest. We have Ged, who, while not perfect, sees women as people and does not expect them to serve him because he's a man.
We also have the fascinating character of Spark, Tenar's son who is uncomfortable with women. He doesn't hate them, not like the wizard does. But he expects them to serve him and stay in their place and whenever his mother shows that she is a person with agency, he is uncomfortable. We get the sense that under the right conditions, he could be violent. Tenar believes she's failed in raising him, and in a way she has, though I don't think she needs to take on that burden fully since he is, after all, a grown adult who makes his own choices. But he's never going to learn that women are fully people. He's just not. (He's contrasted very explicitly with Arren/Lebannen, who Tenar likes to think of as her son as well.) Tenar essentially has to walk away from him--to hand over the home she's made--knowing that he'll find some woman who is willing to be what he wants a woman to be.
And so she goes to the home of her kind father-figure and starts again. And again, she chooses a quiet, domestic life. But she also chooses to love and champion Therru/Tehanu. Other people turn away from the child's suffering--Tenar looks it full in the face and chooses this child anyway. A key idea of the book is that there are some things that simply cannot be healed. Not ever. And we have to live with them and find a way to transcend them, and we can't do that alone, but only with love and community.
I like how only the third most important character in the book is Ged, who is trying to learn how to be a man and not a wizard. The whole reveal about how wizards are celibate (and not only celibate, but cast a kind of spell that makes other people not attracted to them!) is absolutely fascinating and I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time. This celibacy is presented as something that is broken. I don't think Le Guin was against celibacy (as an ace person, I sure hope she wasn't!), but she's very much against enforced celibacy that, after all, has its roots in misogyny. The implication is that the purity of men's magic will be tainted or undone by proximity to women. I hope somebody out there has written an essay comparing the wizards of Earthsea to Catholic clergy because seriously.
Anyway, now that Ged has no more magic, he can become a man instead of a wizard. I think the way this is presented could be read as pretty heteronormative--he, in essence, becomes a man by loving/sleeping with Tenar and adopting a child. Again, I would hope that Le Guin isn't trying to present this as The Only Way but just as the way Ged chooses. And, after all, the vast majority of people no the planet are heterosexual and do decide to pair off and have children. I don't think that Le Guin would judge or deny other ways of being, though I wish she'd explored them a bit more. There's some intriguing references to witches who take other another witch as their life partner, but whether or not they're Boston marriages or romantic/sexual relationships is very much not addressed.
I remind myself that Le Guin can't explore every way of living a life in this series, and that what she is doing--giving dignity to the life of a woman who does women's work--is just so hugely important that I can forgive the fact that the stories are, after all, very heteronormative.
But back to what the book actually does. In the end, it is not magic as craft or skill that saves the day, it's relationships. Tehanu's love for Tenar and Ged and Kalessin's love for Tehanu are what lead to things being set right (by the evil wizard being consumed with fire, just as Tehanu was scarred by it).
I think it's a truly extraordinary book, completely unlike any I've ever read. And I know that I did not properly appreciate it at 15 or whatever when I read it. As I said on GoodReads, I think it's a book that you appreciate more the older you get. Reading it well into my 30s was such a richer and more thought-provoking experience. I imagine reading it in my 60s would lead me to appreciate it even more.
I don't think I'd ever read Tales from Earthsea! I am not a short story person, so I probably decided that it just wasn't necessary and skipped it entirely. This was unwise, because the stories both flesh out the worldbuilding and, more important, introduce themes and problems that will be brought to conclusion in the final book. It's absolutely necessary to read it in order to experience and understand the whole story.
There's a lot going on in this collection. I'm not entirely sure all of it works for me--The Diamond and Darkrose story, for instance... I get the idea she's trying to explore (the idea of that you can only have one passion or calling and must be true to it is just wrong! Loving one thing doesn't mean you love another thing less!) but I don't really care all that much about the characters. It is a bit of a deeper dive into how the celibacy spell actually works, though.
Gender is everywhere! We get a story about how magic came to be associated with men and how women resisted that. Roke school, it turns out, was founded by both men and women, and it only later became a place for men. Erian's story kind of balances out Tenar's--here is the woman who doesn't want to be a wife and a mother. She wants to figure out who she really is.
I'm torn about the "who she really is" bit. I appreciate that she goes to the school and is like, "It's stupid that you don't let women in," and some of the men agree with her and some don't, and the ones who agree with her are clearly right. I like her becoming a dragon, and I like when she meets Tehanu in Book 6! But I'm kind of struggling with the fact that we don't get a woman who says, "This has traditionally been men's work, but I am fully capable of doing it and I want to do it, and I should be allowed to." Erian enters the school only to find out that she's something Other. She doesn't stay. She doesn't learn the things that only men are allowed to learn. I wish someone had! I think we're supposed to assume that after Book 6, women's magic will be appreciated and, if Roke school continues to exist, women will be permitted. But this is never explicit in the way I want it to be. I don't know. I'm still processing this.
The Other Wind is the culmination of both the gender stuff (women are key in setting the world to rights) and fixing the stuff about life/death/the afterlife that was clearly bothering Le Guin. I like how this happens--all kinds of people, regardless of gender, coming together to tear down a wall that should never have been built in the first place. I think that's beautiful. And I like that it isn't shown in a big climactic, dramatic scene. This ending could be almost abrupt, but somehow it feels fitting.
I don't feel particularly strongly about the rest of the story to be honest (though I do like that we have the character of Arren/Lebannen start to show some real sexism and have to learn his lesson). I kind of want to reread it to figure out whether it works for me on a level besides, "Yes, we have fixed the thing that was broken in Earthsea!" I like that all these different cultures and traditions had held onto certain pieces of the truth--the Kargs, the Pelnish, and the Hardic peoples had different ways of seeing the world, and they were right about some things and wrong about others, and only by sharing their stories could they see the true narrative they were operating within. I do love that a lot! Thematically the book really, really works, but I'm not as taken with it on a story level, if that makes sense. Perhaps I will be upon a reread in a few years.
Overall, it's a wonderful series. I think it works better as a series than most of the individual books do, Tombs and Tehanu aside. Those two books are the best as individual stories and get 5 stars from me. The rest got 4 stars or no star rating at all because I couldn't figure out how I felt about them. But the series itself, I believe, does deserve 5 stars. Taken as a whole, it works.
As I mentioned, I haven't read the series since high school, and my memory of it was that it was kind of...slight. My memory was wrong. The books are short, yes. But there is nothing else slight about them. There is so much going on, so much food for thought. I'm honestly shocked I have so much to say about them, but the stuff I'm talking about here is only a little portion of all the things that are present in the series as a whole. There's really nothing else like it.
One of the most immediately noticeable aspects of the series, a thing that sets it apart, is that it feels mythic. A lot of writers attempt to create that feeling, but most don't fully succeed. Le Guin does. Her writing in these books feels like less novels than like the kind of stories you'd be told by an old woman on the other side of a winter fire--you feel like the story's being told to you, not that you're experiencing the story through a character's eyes. This makes them less novels, in my mind, than written-down prose-epics.
It also explains why I wasn't super crazy about them as a high schooler reading them for the first time. I liked them! But I am the kind of person who generally likes a deep-dive into the minds of characters when I read. I just love the novel form, okay! And I think I was especially into it at as teenager. Now as an adult, I do in general prefer that kind of writing, but I am able to appreciate the storytelling approach, especially when it's done as perfectly as Le Guin does it.
Her worldbuilding has a mythic feeling, too. She evokes a deep past without expositioning. Things feel very...mythic (I keep using that word, but I can't not use it!) in a way that I feel like Jung and Joseph Campbell are trying to get to, but they turn it into something annoying. With Le Guin it feels natural. The power of names, the idea of balance, the hero's journey--these become fresh and new in her capable hands.
One thing I most enjoy about the series is watching Le Guin's evolution on multiple levels. There's the fact that the worldbuilding and characterization deepen as each book goes along--and not just in the way that all worldbuilding and characterization deepen as we get more pages. But Le Guin is clearly fleshing things out in ways she never considered when she began writing; for instance, she clearly didn't know when she wrote Wizard that the rest of the sweep of the series would end up being about overthrowing the status quo of the world, especially in regards to gender.
Which is another way her thinking evolves: it's so easy to see that the things she wrote in the first book started to bother her later. Only men can be wizards and learn magic formally? Why? That's profoundly unjust. So she starts to answer not only "How did this happen?" but also "How can we dismantle it?" I mean, in one sense, the series is really about dismantling the patriarchy--but also about how the patriarchy wasn't the way things were in the past, even if people assume it was. Like, the lore of Earthsea shows that once magic was egalitarian and that the school on Roke itself was founded by more women than men. The patriarchy built up over time, mostly because individual men wanted power and others went along with them. Tied to that is an idea of the Dark Times when magic became suspect--and women's magic especially. Like, of course when they're searching for a scapegoat they're going to settle on women.
And the emphasis is on how the world is out of balance and needs to be set right. People striving for power--over other people, over death--always throw the world wildly out of balance and result in tragedy and violence. The seeds of that are absolutely in the first book when Ged, in his pride, sets lose a shadow that will chase him to the ends of the earth if he doesn't confront it. But that's a personal story, as is The Tombs of Atuan. Starting with The Farthest Shore, the scope widens and we see that all of Earthsea is being affected by these things. Books 3-6 tie it explicitly to the issue of sexism and also forgotten history.
In the decades between writing the first book and writing the second trilogy, she also rethought her own worldbuilding. It's clear that she begin to think, "Why did I design a world in which the afterlife looks like that? I don't like what that says about either life or death!" And instead of retconning, as some would, or just going with it, as others would, she...added books that made the entire series about how that afterlife was wrong. And tied it to the human tendency of trying to control things we shouldn't control (death, other people). It works so well!
The Wizard of Earthsea is, honestly, probably my least favorite of the books, even though it's lovely. I can only imagine what it felt like reading it in the 60s/70s and not just because the protagonists are brown. But even though the prose has more of a story-telling quality than that of a novel, it's still more character-driven than a lot of fantasy because the plot is driven by Ged's choices. You've got this punk-ass kid with a ton of talent and latent power, and he's really unlikable at the beginning! Not a lot of writers would risk that! He becomes truly lovable--and admirable, a truly good man--over the course of the series, and I do love that.
The plot starts out pretty straightforwardly with him going to the wizard school to learn. But then he does something really stupid and driven by his own pride, and it literally invites darkness into the world. And the rest of the book is him trying to set it right again. This is not an outside journey imposed on a chosen one. This is a story about a person learning to use their talents appropriately and also how to accept responsibility for their actions.
The prose is simple and clear and beautiful. Le Guin has such a way of conveying setting/nature in just a few short words. This kind of thing is much harder than it looks, but Le Guin makes it look very easy.
But it's still a boy hero coming-of-age story. A non-white spin on that was deeply needed when it was written, but it's always going to be fundamentally less appealing to me than the more female-centric books.
The Tombs of Atuan is suffused with a sense of...gosh, I don't even know what word I want to use here. The feeling is huge and shadowy and it hovers over us as readers as much as it does over Tenar. I can't even verbalize what kind of atmosphere Le Guin evokes, only that it's potent and I can't compare its flavor to anything else I've read. It's as deep as the darkness of the Tombs.
Again, Le Guin doesn't care about making her protagonist likeable. I mean, I think Tenar is deeply sympathetic--so very lonely and alone. But she does a lot of uncaring things, especially at the beginning. A different writer would have made her a plucky heroine who we can immediately root for instead of a twisted little girl. I love how prickly Tenar is, how self-absorbed. How could she be otherwise?
And I looooooove a book about having your worldview shattered. Ged walks into her life and overturns everything she's ever known. It's terrifying and exciting in equal measure. Tenar makes choices, and more choices, and changes her mind, and ultimately decides to trust another person--something she's clearly never done.
I like the eerie, haunted sense of mysticism. I like that main theme is, "No one ever becomes free by themself." It's a haunting book, in the best way.
I wasn't thrilled when I picked up The Farthest Shore for this reread. I was like, "Oh, another boy's adventure." But I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would! The worldbuilding is fun--I especially love the Sea People and frankly could have spent an entire book with them! It's interesting that for the first time, we have an antagonist that we don't really know. But we don't need to know him. He isn't important. What's important is the desire that drives him--the desire to live forever. Le Guin thinks this is deeply evil, and it's this desire that many people have that is the real enemy.
The descriptions here are especially lovely--I love the way she writes about the sea. I like Arren, and I'm not even bothered by the whole Chosen King thing. He becomes the appropriate person to be king through his actions, even though his birthright does play into it. I normally dislike monarchy being portrayed as a good thing, but it works in this series because of the idea of the mythic feel that is present in so many cultures: the good king being the embodiment of order and a healthy society. Plus, she problematizes it in the last book by introducing an entire council that he consults about every major decision (and it seems they even have veto-power!).
Tehanu is, imo, the stand-out book of the series. I literally can't think of another fantasy novel that is so focused on women and women's work in this specific way. McKinley has some notes of this in her work, but no body does it full-on the way Le Guin does. She's never had patience for the kind of "feminist" text that says that women need to do traditionally male things in order to be important. She wants to make the things that have traditionally been women's work as important as men's work, and she is unapologetic about this.
It's so unexpected--we're revisiting Tenar and we find that though she had the option to study magic with Ogion, an option that almost no other woman in Earthsea has ever had, she chooses instead to become a wife and a mother. And the narrative never, ever judges her for this! What other writer would do that?
Later, we get women who do decide to do the men's work of magic, and they are right and good, too. But Tenar, who has always been set apart, decides to enter fully into the world of normal women. And so we get a book that's about a middle-aged widow and her small--but never unimportant--struggles that ultimately aren't exactly small, either.
There are dragons. The dragons are important to the story. But the rest of the story is just...Tenar trying to live her life, and Therru/Tehanu trying to figure out how to live hers, and Ged trying to build a new life of a kind he'd never learned how to live before. There's an evil sorcerer, but he isn't the kind of evil that wants to overthrow the world--he's the kind of evil who wants to get revenge on a woman who doesn't defer to him. It's about his ego on a small scale. It's about the kind of control abusive people--mostly abusive men--want to have over the people in their lives.
This kind of lust for control leads to Therru/Tehanu being horribly, horribly hurt. It leads to this wizard becoming obsessed with teaching Tenar her "place." It leads to this wizard hating Ged, too, because Ged is a man who sees women as equal and so he must also be punished.
The book asks, "Why do men hate women? Why are they scared of women?" And so, as a consequence, "Why do they hurt women?" It doesn't provide an answer (Moss's monologue about men and magic is not, I believe, an answer, but simply one perspective). But I can't think of many works of speculative fiction that bother to ask that question at all. I appreciate that Le Guin was wise enough to know that there is no simple answer and so she doesn't try to provide one. Instead she says, how is it possible to live in a world in which men hate, fear, and hurt women?
Of course Not All Men. Le Guin knows that. So we have Ogion, who is just the loveliest. We have Ged, who, while not perfect, sees women as people and does not expect them to serve him because he's a man.
We also have the fascinating character of Spark, Tenar's son who is uncomfortable with women. He doesn't hate them, not like the wizard does. But he expects them to serve him and stay in their place and whenever his mother shows that she is a person with agency, he is uncomfortable. We get the sense that under the right conditions, he could be violent. Tenar believes she's failed in raising him, and in a way she has, though I don't think she needs to take on that burden fully since he is, after all, a grown adult who makes his own choices. But he's never going to learn that women are fully people. He's just not. (He's contrasted very explicitly with Arren/Lebannen, who Tenar likes to think of as her son as well.) Tenar essentially has to walk away from him--to hand over the home she's made--knowing that he'll find some woman who is willing to be what he wants a woman to be.
And so she goes to the home of her kind father-figure and starts again. And again, she chooses a quiet, domestic life. But she also chooses to love and champion Therru/Tehanu. Other people turn away from the child's suffering--Tenar looks it full in the face and chooses this child anyway. A key idea of the book is that there are some things that simply cannot be healed. Not ever. And we have to live with them and find a way to transcend them, and we can't do that alone, but only with love and community.
I like how only the third most important character in the book is Ged, who is trying to learn how to be a man and not a wizard. The whole reveal about how wizards are celibate (and not only celibate, but cast a kind of spell that makes other people not attracted to them!) is absolutely fascinating and I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time. This celibacy is presented as something that is broken. I don't think Le Guin was against celibacy (as an ace person, I sure hope she wasn't!), but she's very much against enforced celibacy that, after all, has its roots in misogyny. The implication is that the purity of men's magic will be tainted or undone by proximity to women. I hope somebody out there has written an essay comparing the wizards of Earthsea to Catholic clergy because seriously.
Anyway, now that Ged has no more magic, he can become a man instead of a wizard. I think the way this is presented could be read as pretty heteronormative--he, in essence, becomes a man by loving/sleeping with Tenar and adopting a child. Again, I would hope that Le Guin isn't trying to present this as The Only Way but just as the way Ged chooses. And, after all, the vast majority of people no the planet are heterosexual and do decide to pair off and have children. I don't think that Le Guin would judge or deny other ways of being, though I wish she'd explored them a bit more. There's some intriguing references to witches who take other another witch as their life partner, but whether or not they're Boston marriages or romantic/sexual relationships is very much not addressed.
I remind myself that Le Guin can't explore every way of living a life in this series, and that what she is doing--giving dignity to the life of a woman who does women's work--is just so hugely important that I can forgive the fact that the stories are, after all, very heteronormative.
But back to what the book actually does. In the end, it is not magic as craft or skill that saves the day, it's relationships. Tehanu's love for Tenar and Ged and Kalessin's love for Tehanu are what lead to things being set right (by the evil wizard being consumed with fire, just as Tehanu was scarred by it).
I think it's a truly extraordinary book, completely unlike any I've ever read. And I know that I did not properly appreciate it at 15 or whatever when I read it. As I said on GoodReads, I think it's a book that you appreciate more the older you get. Reading it well into my 30s was such a richer and more thought-provoking experience. I imagine reading it in my 60s would lead me to appreciate it even more.
I don't think I'd ever read Tales from Earthsea! I am not a short story person, so I probably decided that it just wasn't necessary and skipped it entirely. This was unwise, because the stories both flesh out the worldbuilding and, more important, introduce themes and problems that will be brought to conclusion in the final book. It's absolutely necessary to read it in order to experience and understand the whole story.
There's a lot going on in this collection. I'm not entirely sure all of it works for me--The Diamond and Darkrose story, for instance... I get the idea she's trying to explore (the idea of that you can only have one passion or calling and must be true to it is just wrong! Loving one thing doesn't mean you love another thing less!) but I don't really care all that much about the characters. It is a bit of a deeper dive into how the celibacy spell actually works, though.
Gender is everywhere! We get a story about how magic came to be associated with men and how women resisted that. Roke school, it turns out, was founded by both men and women, and it only later became a place for men. Erian's story kind of balances out Tenar's--here is the woman who doesn't want to be a wife and a mother. She wants to figure out who she really is.
I'm torn about the "who she really is" bit. I appreciate that she goes to the school and is like, "It's stupid that you don't let women in," and some of the men agree with her and some don't, and the ones who agree with her are clearly right. I like her becoming a dragon, and I like when she meets Tehanu in Book 6! But I'm kind of struggling with the fact that we don't get a woman who says, "This has traditionally been men's work, but I am fully capable of doing it and I want to do it, and I should be allowed to." Erian enters the school only to find out that she's something Other. She doesn't stay. She doesn't learn the things that only men are allowed to learn. I wish someone had! I think we're supposed to assume that after Book 6, women's magic will be appreciated and, if Roke school continues to exist, women will be permitted. But this is never explicit in the way I want it to be. I don't know. I'm still processing this.
The Other Wind is the culmination of both the gender stuff (women are key in setting the world to rights) and fixing the stuff about life/death/the afterlife that was clearly bothering Le Guin. I like how this happens--all kinds of people, regardless of gender, coming together to tear down a wall that should never have been built in the first place. I think that's beautiful. And I like that it isn't shown in a big climactic, dramatic scene. This ending could be almost abrupt, but somehow it feels fitting.
I don't feel particularly strongly about the rest of the story to be honest (though I do like that we have the character of Arren/Lebannen start to show some real sexism and have to learn his lesson). I kind of want to reread it to figure out whether it works for me on a level besides, "Yes, we have fixed the thing that was broken in Earthsea!" I like that all these different cultures and traditions had held onto certain pieces of the truth--the Kargs, the Pelnish, and the Hardic peoples had different ways of seeing the world, and they were right about some things and wrong about others, and only by sharing their stories could they see the true narrative they were operating within. I do love that a lot! Thematically the book really, really works, but I'm not as taken with it on a story level, if that makes sense. Perhaps I will be upon a reread in a few years.
Overall, it's a wonderful series. I think it works better as a series than most of the individual books do, Tombs and Tehanu aside. Those two books are the best as individual stories and get 5 stars from me. The rest got 4 stars or no star rating at all because I couldn't figure out how I felt about them. But the series itself, I believe, does deserve 5 stars. Taken as a whole, it works.
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Regarding their heteronormativity, I like to think that, if she'd lived longer or felt like returning to the series, this would be another thing that she'd argue against and correct, much in the manner that she recognised other mistakes in the earlier books, and reflected on this in the later ones.
I haven't reread the books for a while, but I agree with you that it's a series that rewards rereading — even though the earlier books are very much intended for teenagers, there are things that they say that don't resonate (and indeed remain hidden) until adulthood. I do remember reading both The Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu as a teenager and kind of bleakly realising that they were warning me about a lot of awfulness that I could expect as a woman, and that this awfulness was pretty much unavoidable — and then rereading the series when I was in my thirties, and knowing that teenage!me had been right. But it was kind of validating to realise this, rather than bleak — like feeling seen, understanding that Le Guin had recognised something profound about my own experiences, and the experiences shared by so many women. She really was so perceptive and empathetic.
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It really is such an extraordinarily accomplished body of work — and although you can make a case for other Le Guin books being more groundbreaking or important for the genre (e.g. her adult standalone science fiction novels), I firmly believe that the Earthsea books are her greatest contribution, for all the reasons you've outlined.
Yeah, it's unlike any other fantasy series I can think of. It really is singular.
I share your hope that she would have revisited/revised/subverted the heteronormativity. Honestly one of my favorite things about her as a writer is how clear and upfront she is about how much her thinking changed over the course of her life. Watching her say (sometimes literally!), "I thought X when I wrote it, but I was wrong/my thinking was limited/etc." is really an extraordinary thing that has made a big impression on me.
even though the earlier books are very much intended for teenagers, there are things that they say that don't resonate (and indeed remain hidden) until adulthood.
There is SO much I didn't see, and I was a very precocious reader! But that makes me appreciate it more!
But it was kind of validating to realise this, rather than bleak — like feeling seen, understanding that Le Guin had recognised something profound about my own experiences, and the experiences shared by so many women. She really was so perceptive and empathetic.
YES!
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It's my opinion that the Earthsea books perfectly encapsulate Le Guin's political journey as a writer, and most specifically her thoughts on sexism. AWoE has some moments that are genuinely gross, and then we see her developing and developing her ideas until you end up at TOW, which has a strong argument about violence against women, the importance of women's work, and the need for collaboration across gender lines… while also being full of what might politely be termed White Feminist Nonsense. It's a fascinating journey to take with her; if I ever had a course on Le Guin, which I won't, I'd have people read the series straight through first thing, like you just did, to provide a framework for her other works. (And, I think, to sort of shake any blithe confidence in her infallibility; I think she's increasingly a sort of untouchable icon in the feminist specfic space, and that's a much less interesting way of looking at her works.)
Everything you say about community here I nodded along to! I think Le Guin really is still the star in that: how necessary it is, how complicated it is, how fragile its dynamics are.
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It's a fascinating journey to take with her; if I ever had a course on Le Guin, which I won't, I'd have people read the series straight through first thing, like you just did, to provide a framework for her other works.
I think this would be such a good idea! Watching her in conversation with herself is a really fascinating thing. (And also, she'd be horrified at the idea of being untouchable since one of her greatest virtues has always been to admit when she was wrong. Because she was wrong a lot! Like all of us!)
I am interested in what White Feminist Nonsense sticks out to you. There's some things I can think of, but I'm sure there's stuff I missed.
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Regarding TOW, primarily it's so much of what goes on with Seserakh, poor thing. It's aged really badly, one of the few things that has that really sticks out as "oh, this book was written in specifically the late 90s/early 2000s." Unlike you, I never found Lebannen particularly interesting or sympathetic, and I think his whole regression-to-sexism-oh-wait-it's-love arc in TOW is clumsy and poorly resolved. And, last, winging away as a dragon is all very well and good, but it's not a terribly satisfying conclusion if you do want to stay in the world and effect some change.
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I have often thought that this is the ideal way to read her works.
Oh, yeah, the Seserakh stuff is far and away the weakest part of the book, and it didn't have to be, which is very frustrating. I don't know that it reads to me as white feminism, but it is just not convincing.
I think I'm a bit more okay with Lebannen's his arc in TOW because I read it as a guy who's never showed any sexism because he's never had any woman in his life with any kind of intimate responsibility to (as opposed to the general responsibility he owes as king to his female subjects). Suddenly, there's a woman who is asking something of him (well, she's not asking it, but her presence demands it) and he finds that after all he wasn't so egalitarian as all that. But the "oh wait it's love" stuff is completely unconvincing--I need Le Guin to have written a novel about them actually getting to know each other, and alas, I will never get it.
And, last, winging away as a dragon is all very well and good, but it's not a terribly satisfying conclusion if you do want to stay in the world and effect some change.
I see this, definitely. I think the implication is that there will be major change, but it is definitely a let down that we the readers don't get to see it.
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I also have a question - have you read Left Hand of Darkness?
(I seem to be spamming you, but you just write very interesting posts!)
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I have! I have some real complaints about it (though Le Guin later had complaints about it, too, so she'd probably agree with all of mine) but it's so good!
(If this is spam, I don't mind being spammed!)
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Re. Left Hand of Darkness, then it's such an odd one for me. I found the themes and ideas fascinating (and read some of the things she'd said later) and generally found the concepts and the worldbuilding chewy and complex. Except I read it through sheer willpower, as the story/characters just didn't grab me. I'm glad I persisted, but it was weird - I'm not used to that.
Hence wondering about Earthsea - would it be enjoyable, or a chore?
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That makes a lot of sense. Earthsea is completely different stylistically from LHoD, so while I can't say whether you'll enjoy it, I can say that if you did dislike it, it would be for entirely different reasons!
I find the prose very pretty and readable, and as I mentioned, it kind of feels like being told a story by a very good fireside storyteller. You'll know within the first chapter of the first book whether that works for you, I'd say!
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That is a very helpful answer, thank you!<3
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