Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Goha made a bed of dry grass and willow leaves, hidden among the thickets like a hare’s form, and rolled the child up in a blanket on it. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you’re a cocoon. In the morning you’ll be a butterfly and hatch out.’ She lighted no fire, but lay in her cloak beside the child and watched the stars shine one by one and listened to what the stream said quietly, until she slept.

She was still unresponsive, without anger, without joy; but since they had been here her awful vigilance, her immobility, had almost imperceptibly relaxed. She had desired the peaches. She had thought of planting the stone, of increasing the number of peaches in the world.

A sign you're coming out of depression -- you care to increase the number of peaches in the world. I like that.

Then he too got up, and brought his dish to the sink, and finished clearing the table. He washed the dishes while Tenar put the food away. And that interested her. She had been comparing him to Flint; but Flint had never washed a dish in his life. Women’s work. But Ged and Ogion had lived here, bachelors, without women; everywhere Ged had lived, it was without women; so he did the ‘women’s work’ and thought nothing about it. It would be a pity, she thought, if he did think about it, if he started fearing that his dignity hung by a dishcloth.

She thought about how it was to have been a woman in the prime of life, with children and a man, and then to lose all that, becoming old and a widow, powerless. But even so she did not feel she understood his shame, his agony of humiliation. Perhaps only a man could feel so. A woman got used to shame.

‘You are beautiful,’ Tenar said in a different tone. ‘Listen to me, Therru. Come here. You have scars, ugly scars, because an ugly, evil thing was done to you. People see the scars. But they see you, too, and you aren’t the scars. You aren’t ugly. You aren’t evil. You are Therru, and beautiful. You are Therru who can work, and walk, and run, and dance, beautifully, in a red dress.’

Like most people, Tiff believed that you are what happens to you. The rich and strong must have virtue; one to whom evil has been done must be bad, and may rightly be punished.

‘How she’s changing!’ she said. ‘I can’t keep up with her. I’m old to be bringing up a child. And she … She obeys me, but only because she wants to.’ ‘It’s the only justification for obedience,’ Ged observed.

The Mages of Roke are men – their power is the power of men, their knowledge is the knowledge of men. Both manhood and magery are built on one rock: power belongs to men. If women had power, what would men be but women who can’t bear children? And what would women be but men who can?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Trust is not what we’re taught.’ She watched the child stack the wood in the box. ‘If power were trust,’ she said. ‘I like that word. If it weren’t all these arrangements – one above the other – kings and masters and mages and owners – It all seems so unnecessary. Real power, real freedom, would lie in trust, not force.’