LeGuin's debts

As Jasmine and Arlyn have already perceptively fleshed out LeGuin’s reliance on, or reversion to, essentialist gender divisions, I’d like to try to advance the argument one more step, for it seems to me that LeGuin’s gender essentialism is largely a consequence of her decision to hue rather closely to the paradigm of existing human society in other respects. I’d hardly hold this against her—it’s a common feature of utopian fiction, and says more about the difficulty (and perhaps even ultimate inutility) of utopian fantasy than her skills as an author. Besides, for the most part this objection is somewhat necessarily exaggerated in conversation about the novel’s premise and style (both of which strike me as quite fantastic, after Kai), fading upon further exposure.

First, though, I’d like to hesitate on this idea—on the observation that a society perennially at peace lurching towards war sounds less like the fictional utopian product of cognitive estrangement than that process’ abandonment halfway. What particularly interests me is the possibility that one might follow this only half-estranged mode of authorship (“this estrangement which is not one”?) into the world of Gethen. Hints are available on the very first page, where the inventiveness of (science) fiction seems to unify more than it divides: “if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them is false, and it is all one story” (Left Hand of Darkness 1).

The real discovery, however, comes with a lavish description of a spiritual sect in kemmer. I, at least, expected to find a kind of depersonalizing, anarchist transcendence; perhaps I was projecting too forcefully the American versions of “Eastern” spirituality popularized in LeGuin’s 60s and 70s, although the elucidation of “the Handdarata discipline of Presence, which is a kind of trance . . . involving self-loss (self-augmentation?) through extreme sensual receptiveness and awareness”—especially in light of LeGuin’s explicit admission that she was “thinking of a Taoist ideal”—is relatively unambiguous in its debts (LHOD 57, Dancing at the Edge of the World 12). (The derivation of “Handdarata” from “Handdara” would even allow us to specify our subject as Indian orientalism.) Instead, however, the psycho-sexual episode proves to be mastered by “the Weaver”: “the center was still Faxe.” (65) The content and context of the fiction is fantastic, in other words (in every sense of the word), but its structure is as familiar to the modern human reader as mind control. That one of the most transcendent forms of interpersonal communication on Gethen should retain such a stark degree of individual authority says, I think, quite a bit about LeGuin’s idea of authority in general.

Ai and Estraven

The relationship between Ai and Estraven takes long to develop because of Ai’s distrust and Estraven’s failure to communicate. But the biological division is still greater than the social ones, and the journey across the ice parallels the slow process of empathy. Genly Ai describes Estraven in physical, somer-kemmer or woman-man dualized terms, especially by sight: “I saw [Estraven] now defenseless and half-naked in a colder light … and saw him as he was” (201), “I saw then again … what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in [Estraven]: that he was a woman as well as a man” (248). For Ai, their defining moment of friendship came from accepting the difference between the two, and yet the power in the scene (248–249) derives from the great potential of their mutual love during Estraven’s kemmer.

Ai’s valuation of physical sexuality and love contrast Estraven’s use of intuition and psychological understanding, as mysterious as the nature through which they travel: “There is a frailty about [Ai] … he has a spirit easy to despair and quick to defiance: a fierce impatient courage” (227), “[Ai’s] name is a cry of pain” (229), “I am infected by Ai’s pure pleasure” (230). Even Estraven’s curiosity of Ai’s kemmer-perversion is framed in terms of what Estraven believes is Ai’s “low-grade sort of desire” (232) and not primarily a physical description.

Ai and Estraven also differ in their narrative styles. Whereas Ai frequently writes as “I” and recalls dialogue, Estraven instead observes, describes, and conjectures. Again one sees the dualism between seeing, through one’s own eye, and intuiting as facets of getting to the truth, which for each is appreciation for the other. The physical love, seeing-is-believing methodology of Ai then is a rather Western perspective next to the Estraven’s Eastern intuition: emotional, patient, trust-valuing, believing-is-seeing. But their apparent equality in the fairness of a harsh environment covers, with a layer of snow, the dominance each school exerts on either Ai or Estraven, who only when stripped bare of the social and normative values of Karhide or Terra—shifgrethor and masculinity—contemplate a substantial friendship aided by the tension of kemmer between aliens. The periodic changes in narrative voice provides a better “blending process” than, say, “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” which as Rhiannon pointed out is characterized by a marked imbalance.

On the other hand, such an imbalance is present but not at the detailed, personal level which suggests a gradual acceptance of otherness. Instead, the ultimate arrival of Ai’s ship, the prophecy of Gethen’s alliance, and Estraven’s death are each conquests, however empathetic or nonviolent, which in this case are of the Western ideas over the Eastern. More important than the exactly posed conflict is Ai’s final isolation following his transformation across the ice. In a position to understand and appreciate both worlds, Ai instead sees in his own kind as “great apes with intelligent eyes” while finding “familiar” the ungendered face of a Gethenian (296). Had Estraven survived, they may have experienced a similar alienation among his Karhidians, who in fact betrayed him to punish his own attempt for understanding. Is this the cost of acknowledging the other? The story ends before we see the Ekumen and Gethen’s progress, so Ai and Estraven are tragic characters. Or, perhaps the way to reaching out to the other may be attained, as Ai did, at the level of personal touch, and its prevalence increased by diffusion rather than swept away by some clash of cultures.