Miévillians discussion
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The Left Hand of Darkness
Le Guin: Left Hand of Darkness
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2] Left Hand OD Chapter 4 to end of chapter6
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I completely agree with Le Guin's doubts. Not only do the Gethenians feel predominantly male (partly because of the pronouns, which in turn is partly because it's mostly narrated by Ai, and, as said, because many of them are in roles of power, associated with men, e.g. King), but also because much of it is so misogynistic. Almost every time feminine qualities are mentioned (which isn't often), it's pejorative. Again, that is reflecting Ai's opinion, but it did feel odd, coming from a female author.
Cecily wrote: "I completely agree with Le Guin's doubts. Not only do the Gethenians feel predominantly male (partly because of the pronouns, which in turn is partly because it's mostly narrated by Ai, and, as sai..."I absolutely agree. It feels very awkward...
By the way! I wanted to make mention of the Foretelling! Did you guys who did Perdido Street Station with us notice the obvious (to me, anyway) fact that CM was making a nod to U Le Guin with his Weaver? Interesting that she also uses the metaphor of spinning the web of fate and she even mentioned a spider...
I know these are actually sort of Greek mythology concepts, but we do know that CM likes to nod to other authors, and well, there we go with Weaver. I do know that he very much likes invertebrates too, heh.
...and do you remember how we weren't sure of CM's Weaver's gender? How fitting...Regarding the telepathy: keep in mind that this book was written at a time when Uri Geller was taken seriously and the USSR government was doing serious experiments with telepathy/remote sensing.
"But I began to understand Karhide better after a halfmonth in Otherhord. Under that nation's politics and parades and passions runs an old darkness, passive, anarchic, silent, the fecund darkness of the Handdara."This mirrors her comments in the commencement speech you posted, Traveller. She's the only author I've come across who chooses "darkness" as a positive thing.
"Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action."
This is a fascinating twist on the scientific method. It feels somehow deliciously perverted.
I love the conversation between Genly/Genry and Faxe about the nature of knowledge and truth. I also enjoyed the bit of Bhuddism she inserts:
(I see you call it a deliciously perverted twist on the scientific method, Derek. That in itself sounds deliciously...twisted, haha)
See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religio...
and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfr...
"The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion… Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, predictable, inevitable—the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?" "That we shall die." "Yes. There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer. … The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next."
They're digging into epistemological questions and come up with rather paradoxical conclusions... I like the conclusion about that basically all that is certain and knowable is "permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
But the paradox there is, what is the use of these Foretellers, then?
Also note that the previous "hearth-story" The Domestication of Hunch, fits in very nicely with this whole idea--only, in the Hunch story, fate seems a tangible thing (as with the web idea), and seems knowable, not uncertain. ...so do these people believe in the inevitability of fate or not, or is Le Guin herself undecided, and basically just showing a certain prevalent mindset which believes that fate is a tangible thing, like a web, and can either be manipulated, or is fixed and immutable?
Derek wrote: "... It feels somehow deliciously perverted. "As is your wonderful phrase.
Traveller wrote: "...what is the use of these Foretellers, then?..."
Later on (near the middle? I don't have my copy with me), there's some exploration of this, which reminded me very much of Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide". I presume this was an influence, conscious or otherwise.
"Anyway, I was about to say that by this time, I'm really starting to get irritated with Le Guin's treatment of especially the gender thing. Beyond Ai's misogyny, she seems to insert over and above his, a misogyny of her own, in the way she constructs Gethen society and personality as one that is pedestrian, placid, narrow minded, clinging to convention, unwilling to embrace the new."Since it's my second read of the book (and since on my first read-through I had similar irritations) I feel that I need to pipe in for the defense of this book:
The misogyny, I feel, is still Genly, is still the perception that he holds of femininity being inferior, being weak, being treacherous. He just feels very uncomfortable without the familiar constraints of masculine world.
As for speed of travel - I have dog-eared that page TWICE. Because my instinct was to be perplexed and have the same reaction as you described. And then I stopped to think - why shouldn't it make sense? Why should we aspire to go faster just for the sake of it? Why not take things at more leisurely pace? Why is progress for the sake of progress the only acceptable way of running things? It seems that Gethenians, by probably thinking before rushing into things, managed to avoid horrific happenings like wars, for instance. If you think of 'journey, not just destination', then taking your rime of getting from A to B is more reasonable than just rushing into anything headfirst. I was thinking about it recently at work, when I realized how much we as doctors try to rush labor along - 'let's get this labor going, let's get this baby born faster!' - and I began wondering - why? How big of a benefit is there to rush a perfectly normal thing along? Not every mother would want to shorten her labor just to get there faster. Not everyone needs the speed of things. A more relaxed pace can be easier and rewarding. Just because you can go faster does not mean you should or should want to.
I think what Le Guin is saying that if our society was not created as fueled by testosterone only, if people (not only women) had to stop and think about the consequences of many of our choices for children of whom anyone can be the primary caretaker, if machismo was not the default mode on which the present society was found, maybe it would have been a tad more balanced, a tad more thoughtful, a bit less rushed. And I think it's based not just on 'woman' vs. 'man' but the 'free' vs. 'needing to think about children without just assuming that someone else would take on the responsibility'.
Genly Ai is still very far away from letting go of his perceived masculine superiority and appreciating this very different culture for what it is, without viewing it through a narrow prism of his worldview.
While rereading this book, I'm thinking that part of me longs for the similar society that Le Guin describes, the one without gender roles and expectations, the one that freaks Genly out by the idea that men are not truly 'free' there because (gasp!) they have some 'feminine' responsibilities. And it's this lack of gender divide that I love.
Nataliya, I like your analysis, but for me, Ai's voice was too strong and so obscured that message somewhat, in a blather of misogyny and narrow-mindedness. A bit later than this section, he observes "A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated... On Winter... one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience."
Evidently we don't agree with him on that.
Nataliya wrote: "Anyway, I was about to say that by this time, I'm really starting to get irritated with Le Guin's treatment of especially the gender thing. Beyond Ai's misogyny, she seems to insert over and above..."That is a wonderful, thoughtful and thought-provoking post, Nataliya, thank you! Yes upon reflection, she does seem to be bringing a lot of Bhuddist tenets into the equation.
I do see your point re time and rushing.
However, as far as the extreme masculinity and patriarchal 'feel' of the world is concerned, of course it does not stop with Ai, but continues with Estraven in the next section, who also constantly speaks of "men" and refers to his fellow Gethenians in the masculine from.
This makes it feel as if they are indeed males who just occasionally turn into female mode when breeding...-and that seems to degrade the idea of femininity even more for me, because it seems to scream out that maleness is the default and femaleness is purely for breeding; which is not quite true is it?
We need the sperm as much as we need the ova, and it just happens to have fallen upon females to be the only ones with wombs and upon whom childbearing has fallen--but I think this would be better discussed in the next section.
I'll post the thread up for it later today.
Cecily wrote: "A bit later than this section, he observes "A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated... On Winter... one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience."Evidently we don't agree with him on that. .."
Personally, yours truly doesn't agree with
Cecily wrote: "A bit later than this section, he observes "A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated... On Winter... one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience."I love this quote because the only way I can read it is sarcastially (which, of course, is not how Ai means it). 'An appalling experience' - in Alan Rickman's voice, actually, for some reason. The world that respects and judges someone only as a human being should count me in as a future potential citizen.
@ Traveller - ok, we will continue this discussion in the next section where it belongs then.
Yes, I'll post the thread in a few hour's time, as soon as I have a large enough block of time.Btw, the words: A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated... On Winter... one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.""
are not spoken by Ai, but by Ong Tot Oppong, Investigator, of the first Ekumenical landing party on Gethen/ Winter, Cycle 93 E.Y. 1448, who is a woman, which I find quite appaling....but this is the wrong thread for it--apologies in the delay regarding the new thread Perhaps I should post it now and copy and paste these comments to it.
Traveller wrote: "Personally, yours truly doesn't agree with him either, but then, we are females, Cecily... and I suppose that is the point."Well, I don't agree with him either, and I'm male.
I agree with Nataliya about the need for speed. It's like the ever-present emphasis, here, on economic growth - practically all governments insist that growth is not only important but vital, and in my own country that trumps every other consideration. On Gethen, obviously they learned long ago that growth was not only not important, but was probably self-destructive, and they've had a pretty stable society for thousands of years. Things were probably slowly reaching a crisis point - it sounds as if Karhide and Orgoreyn couldn't have coexisted forever, but in their Gethenian way, that probably meant at least a couple of more centuries before things fell apart. The arrival of the Ekumen has accelerated everything, and of course things will never be the same.
Everything sounds better (and more ominous) in Alan Rickman's voice. Anyway, maybe sarcasm is the point, but if so her sarcasm is too subtle for me. There's another incident at the end of the book that really pisses me off.
I too agree with Nataliya's comments about speed. Why should speed be better or lack of it be seen as female? Both have their uses and both get the job done, as Ai says at one point "Compare the torrent and the glacier. Both get where they are going." Also in the Gethenian environment, creeping is not only good but at times necessary, as when trying not to bring down an avalanche.Darkness as a positive thing. I never saw it as such until I started living in northern Sweden. I find the overabundance of light in the spring and summer months annoying to the point of severe irritation, and thus the dark of fall and winter is cozy and comforting.
Ruth wrote: "Darkness as a positive thing. I never saw it as such until I started living in northern Sweden. I find the overabundance of light in the spring and summer months annoying to the point of severe irritation, and thus the dark of fall and winter is cozy and comforting. ..."Glad to hear I'm not as weird as I thought. I'm the only person I know who actually liked the dark as a child, and who felt it to be a comforting presence. Ok, not pitch dark, of course, and not when there is a strong wind blowing making weird shadows... :S
We live on the coast, far from even a street light, and still have blackout curtains on the bedroom window. My wife keeps a room in town to spend a couple of nights a week, and had to make curtains before she could move in. Dark is good.
Traveller wrote: "...and do you remember how we weren't sure of CM's Weaver's gender? How fitting..."Okay, a month late on this but ... YES! I even dog-eared the page in hopes that if we ever get to ask CM questions :)
And in relation to some other comments - I thought the foretellers came closer to what I had imagined as genderless members of society. At least the weaver kind.
I must say that although done before, of course, in Greek and Chinese mythology and various other places, I enjoyed 'The Nineteenth Day' hearth story. So, I guess, since this is part of Gehtenian mythology, they are strong believers in the inevitability of fate.
What do you folks think of Le Guin's treatment of how "fate" works, and her epistemological and metaphysical ideas around this theme, as they are developed in 'The Domestication of Hunch'? I'll say a bit more about these chapters in later posts.
Anyway, I was about to say that by this time, I'm really starting to get irritated with Le Guin's treatment of especially the gender thing. Beyond Ai's misogyny, she seems to insert over and above his, a misogyny of her own, in the way she constructs Gethen society and personality as one that is pedestrian, placid, narrow minded, clinging to convention, unwilling to embrace the new.
I became very irritated when, for instance, she makes Gethenians travel at a slow pace for no other reason that they don't see a reason to travel faster. Um... no reason? What about economy, increasing the efficiency of trade? If those are not sufficient reasons, then how about simply to save time and simply out of impatience? Is thrift and impatience suddenly only a male trait? Not that the Gethenians are even female... ..but she seems to be saying that if females ran things, everything would be slow, pedestrian and illogical.
Apparently she did later regret the way that she had written this book.
In this article in the New Yorker, she is quoted as saying:
Le Guin said she still thought that her original concept of a culture without sexually defined roles was a “neat idea,” but admitted that “it was messy.”
She felt that a number of the premises on which she had built the novel were still compelling, and gave herself high marks for the successful “thought experiment” of creating a world that lacked war, exploitation, and sexuality as social constants. But she was quite hard on herself in other areas, particularly her failure to come up with more original forms of government than a monarchy and a “modern bureaucracy” for the two countries in which the story is set.
The central flaw of the book, she said, was that the Gethenians seemed too much like men, instead of menwomen:
This arises in part from the choice of pronoun. I call Gethenians ‘he’ because I utterly refuse to mangle English by inventing a pronoun for “he/she.”
Le Guin went on to say that pronoun choice wouldn’t have mattered as much if she had been cleverer at showing the “female” component of her Gethenian characters. She noted that when we see Estraven, he is usually depicted in roles that we are culturally conditioned to perceive as male—statesman, sledge-hauler, etc. We don’t ever see Estraven as a mother. Le Guin acknowledged her debt to her readers, who filled in her omissions with their own imaginations. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...
Not only do I agree with her on that, but I also want to add that I feel rather offended at how pedestrian, mulish and paranoid she paints her bi-gender society.
Btw, interesting article, especially the parallels drawn with Embassytown! http://speculativerhetoric.wordpress....