Just wrote this for a class. Figured, what the hell, I'll post it. Maybe someone would be interested, however unlikely. Feel free to critique, of course. I did italicize titles, but it doesn't translate when copied and pasted, and I don't feel like going through all of it just so it's perfect.
The Left Hand of Feminism: Feminist Theory in The Left Hand of Darkness
When I first read Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), I saw it as nothing more than a science-fiction (or speculative fiction) novel, even if it is a wonderfully original and engagingly written one. Not until reading the feminist theories for our class did I realize that there was a lot more going on in Le Guin’s novel. What struck me on the second reading is how much she takes ideas of sex, gender, and sexuality and completely reinvents them in a truly alien way, and in so doing reflects some of the ideas posited in some of the essays that we’ve read. Even more interesting is that almost all the essays we’ve read for class were written after Le Guin’s novel, which makes one wonder if some of these theorists’ ideas may have been sparked by her. These are the reasons I’ve chosen to take another, closer look at Le Guin’s novel through the lens of feminist and gender theory.
Le Guin’s novel is about a man, Genly Ai, who is sent to a planet, named Geth, or, more commonly, Winter (due to it’s climate of deep cold and constant snow), with the mission of convincing the planet to enter the “growing intergalactic organization,” and is, of course, filled with adventure, danger, and all that good stuff that goes into the usual sci-fi novel. What makes the novel unique is the society Le Guin creates for the alien inhabitants (“Gethenians”). They are very much like us, in that they are humanoid (all the aliens in Le Guin’s universe are, as all of the eighty-three inhabited worlds were, conveniently, engineered to produce humans—each different according to the evolution that occurs as a product of their respective planets—by the first world, Hain) but with one very key difference, and that is that they are completely androgynous, except for a few days out of every month. For most of the month, Gethenians are neither male nor female, and don’t even produce hormones that cause a sex drive. Only during a few days in every month (much like our menstrual cycle) will two Gethenians bond, with one becoming male and the other female, to procreate, a process Le Guin calls “kemmer.” Often, in his lifetime (Le Guin decides to always use the pronoun “him” when referring to a Gethenian, unless in the female phase of kemmer), a Gethenian is both mother and father to children. There are Gethenians who are always male or always female, but they are, ironically, seen as perverts, and openly referred to as such in their society.
The whole idea behind taking a closer look into Le Guin’s novel started after reading about the differences in the two main feminist theories, essentialism and constructivism, as described by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. By my understanding, essentialism says that females are inherently imbued with traits that society identifies as “feminine,” constructivism says that these traits are completely fabricated through a patriarchal society, and the differences between male and female extend only so far as biological differences. Le Guin seems to take the constructivist idea to the extreme, by creating a society that is completely equal when it comes to gender. In doing so, she seems to simultaneously point out pros and cons when it comes to constructivist theory. On one hand, certain aspects of human nature that we would rather not have, like war (further discussed later on) are nonexistent. There is no subjugation of one half of the Gethenian species. It is, in many ways, a much more peaceful society. Still, it is a completely alien society, one that humans find disconcerting when encountering it. As discussed in class, the best way to illustrate whether something is good or bad is to often examine the opposite, and Le Guin presents us with a complete opposite of our dualist society. The very inhuman aspects of the society Le Guin gives us strikes me as a stronger argument against constructivist rather than one that supports it. Simply put, male/female duality makes us who we are.
The ideas of dualism play a large role in the ideas behind Le Guin’s novel. In her book, Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua briefly mentions the ideas of dualism with a specificity to gender that seemed almost entirely inspired by Le Guin’s novel. She says, “There is something compelling about being both male and female, about having and entry into both worlds. Contrary to some psychiatric tenets, half and halfs are not suffering from a confusion of sexual identity, or even from a confusion of gender. What we are suffering from is an absolute despot duality that says we are only able to be one or the other” (1020). Le Guin’s society is one that is completely integrated into this idea of having an entry into both worlds, though because they are a part of both worlds, neither of these male/female worlds truly exists, and so becomes a completely different world that can’t even comprehend what a despotic duality would entail.
Le Guin, when imagining what a world without male and female duality would be like, comes to several interesting conclusions. As a previous human explorer of Winter takes note on Gethenian culture in Le Guin’s novel, “There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive.” Because of this, the Gethenian culture is one that is not preoccupied with ideas of femininity and masculinity, and so certain things are not taboo for them. They are a very sexually open people, in that they freely discuss, and even have, sex. Monogamy is a much rarer thing on Winter, though not non-existent. There is no shame in crying. The protagonist has a particularly hard time accepting this, as he hides himself when crying several times; his Gethenian companion at the time of course doesn’t understand his shame. Most interesting of all, though, is that there is no war on Winter. There is murder, and conflict between individuals, but no war. Though never explicitly said by Le Guin, this would seem to suggest she believes that war is a masculine construct, as the male is usually the sex that feels the need to dominate. This would seem to fit in line with Coppelia Kahn’s essay, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” that says (discussing several different feminist theorist’s views), “And they see this gender system not as a mutually beneficial and equitable division of roles, but as a perniciously symbiotic polarity that denies full humanity to both sexes while meshing—and helping to create—their neuroses” (827).
Even with all these disparities from our dualistic ideas, Le Guin does not completely deviate from what we may think of as “normal.” For example, she still has the “mother” of a child (the Gethenian who takes on the female role in Kemmer becomes pregnant if a child is conceived, much like a human) be the primary care-giver of a child. In her essay, Kahn begins by asking, “Why is it women who assume responsibility for children after they are born and weaned . . . nurturing them emotionally and physically, and making them fit for adult society?” (826). The reasons behind her doing so seem to be mostly biological. Because the Gethenian who takes on the role of the mother is the one that carries the child during pregnancy and goes on to breastfeed, the simple physical closeness of mother and child make the mother the primary child raiser. The “father” is involved, but not as closely. Still, just because a child is more closely attached to his “mother,” it does not mean he takes away any feminine traits from being reared by “her” (as, after weaning, the child-bearer immediately reverts to the androgynous state). This, again, seems to go in line with constructivist theory, since it is purely biological reasons the mother raises the child, not a norm imposed by a patriarchal society.
These are just a few of the essays as applied to Le Guin’s book, but as I read them, I seemed to find connections in all of them to The Left Hand of Darkness. In our class, a student had concerns that reading theory and learning to be an analytical reader would make it harder for her to appreciate pop-literature (something I hardly think is a bad thing). I think it does the opposite just as much, as it gives us the ability to appreciate high literature all the more. I know it did for me and Le Guin’s novel. Re-reading it while thinking about feminist theory was a great experience, and has made the novel so much more than it was before.
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