Always Coming Home discussion
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The Hainish Cycle
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One thing that struck me is that she mentioned Estraven's precise calculations of the food and supplies they would need, which you could see as either housewifely or scientific as you preferred. It made me realize how many things that we think of as girly things are just the same as things we think of as manly things depending on who is doing them, or what field they fall under.
I'm an engineer and I design and build things. Well, mostly I design them and make drawings, then someone else builds them, but then I inspect what they've done, and later on when the things ship out to the mills or plants they're meant for, I go and oversee their installation, and start them up. Pressing the "on" switch for the first time is always a bit dicey, you see, so they want it to be me who does it, in case it explodes or something, then it will be definitely my fault. =) Anyway, when later I learned to knit and made forays into sewing, I realized that it's just exactly like engineering, except done in more malleable materials. Instead of steel and wire and so on it uses cloth and yarn. The properties are a bit different but the process is identical. I love the designing and building parts just the same.
So this was a good insight about gender, and of course the book was written long ago when our ideas about gender were a lot more fixed and less fluid than today. But it turns out that almost everything that's traditionally considered as women's work is very much like something else that's traditionally considered men's work so there really is no difference. I found this out during the whole course of my life when I was told over and over that girls don't do that, girls can't do that, and then I just went on and did whatever it was they can't do and showed that they could so do it after all.
UKL being a rare woman among male SF writers back in the day was quite a pioneer in the same way. One of the most fascinating things about this book to me is the insight it gives us into our strongly-gendered society.
One thing that struck me is that she mentioned Estraven's precise calculations of the food and supplies they would need, which you could see as either housewifely or scientific as you preferred. It made me realize how many things that we think of as girly things are just the same as things we think of as manly things depending on who is doing them, or what field they fall under.I was at a conference where one presenter was analyzing this book, but he was not as insightful as you.
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But I usually do wait to read any Introductions, Forewords, or whatever until after I've read the book, so I can form my own opinion unspoiled. And then a lot of times when I read it later I feel like the person who wrote the introduction missed the whole point, don't you? I guess that's because there are as many different books as there are readers, and we all sort of take away something different depending on our interests and experiences.
I second Miriam's comment. Really, Tatiana, that is a beautiful insight and wonderfully tied into your own life experience.I was struck by the concept of love with gender out of the equation. I don't know if I can articulate this right, as I'm not even sure I understood it, but ... I got the impression that LeGuin was saying that gender ... I guess, placed boundaries (?) on the ability of two humans to love deeply, and when gender is removed, two humans could achieve a sort of brotherly love, for lack of a better term, that is deeper than anything we could experience in a society built upon gender norms. Does that make any sense? If not, feel free to say so :)
I also loved one of the interludes--well, I loved all of the interludes--but I'm thinking of the one written by the first-down team that talks about all the ways in which we take gender for granted and how fundamentally different the Gethenian society is absent notions of gender.
I've thought it would be interesting to read LHOD with Estraven's pronouns switched in Genly's point of view.
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Sho, I read something in which UKL said she felt she took the easy way out by using he, him, his always for Estraven, and wouldn't do it the same way again. I bet she'd like to see a version with the pronouns switched.
Alternating them would be more interesting to me.
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I read one sf book (I think by Diane Duane) where the aliens had several genders indicated by variant spelling (eg, "hir").
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I feel a bit like Genly Ai here on planet earth because it seems as though the natives have a number of concepts I just am not getting so far. Oh, well, I guess I'll do my best and eventually may get the hang of things. I sometimes wish I could board a NAFAL ship to the nearest inhabited system then turn around and come back and start again with a new generation of earthlings.
So which customs do you not understand?
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Perhaps you need a book on body language.
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Then when Ai said it hardly seemed worth it for stew, Estraven "gave him a brief dark stare and said 'we need protein.' And tossed away the pelts where overnight the russy, the fierce little rat snakes would devour them and the entrails and the bones, and lick clean the bloody snow."
That phrase "lick clean the bloody snow" is pure poetry. I can say it over and over. The poetry of her sentences gives her writing a weight, an importance, that can't be faked, I think. She's a marvelous writer!
"That phrase "lick clean the bloody snow" is pure poetry. I can say it over and over. The poetry of her sentences gives her writing a weight, an importance, that can't be faked, I think. She's a marvelous writer! "I agree with all that except I don't think I could say the word "lick" over and over. It would make me feel dirty. Or like licking something, which is not exactly the most sanitary way to touch things.
Tatiana wrote: "In The Left Hand of Darkness, Estraven's quality of readiness, of never being hasty or hurried, but always being ready for whatever comes, I would love to learn that quality."Ditto, bigtime. I've gone to a series of classes given my a priest at our parrish about centering prayer (essentially meditation with a Christian theme); I'm trying to put that to use slowing myself down and making myself more balanced. It's not so easy.
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It had not rained, here on these north-facing slopes. Snow-fields stretched down from the pass into the valleys of moraine. We stowed the wheels, uncapped the sledge-runners, put on our skis, and took off -- down, north, onward, into that silent vastness of fire and ice that said in enormous letters of black and white DEATH, DEATH, written right across a continent. The sledge pulled like a feather, and we laughed with joy.
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If that doesn't work, I might can put you together a Care package of UKL books in English somehow. Let me know the ones you need most.
I love "The Left Hand of Darkness" too! I only discovered it this spring and am reading it for the third time now. (I love it so much that I made a geeky quiz on it.) I'm glad I found this group because the discussion here is so insightful. Maybe later I'll contribute some actual thoughts here, but for now it seems I'm just in a state of joy that you can't earn or keep...
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I sometimes worry that she's quietly experienced some real anguish and horror in her life. Otherwise how could her insight be so deep? How could her stories be so exactly true to such experience in the lives of her characters?
Ursula, if you read this, I just want to say that I love you. And I'm sorry for all the pain you must have gone through to be able to write like this. But I'm glad for the stories you've given me. They have fed my spirit all my life.
Tatiana wrote: "Ah, Una, such a poetic description of your state. It made me joyful just to read it! Welcome, welcome, welcome! Your thoughts and impressions are much anticipated!"I must confess that the poetic part about joy is stolen/quoted from "Left Hand of Darkness". But still. :)
These books broke my preconceptions about what science fiction can be.