Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars The events of the fourth book in Ursula K. Le Guin's classic Earthsea series, Tehanu (1990), overlap with and progress from those of the third, The Farthest Shore (1972), in which the Archmage Ged and the young prince Arren/Lebannen go on an epic quest to try to stop the magic and vitality from draining out of the world. Far from powerful male heroes attempting to save the world, in Tehanu the middle-aged Gontish farmer's widow Goha (Tenar of the Ring, though her identity is not confirmed till Ogion says, “Come in, Tenar” at the end of Chapter 2) heals and adopts a little girl whose parents have participated in raping, beating, and tossing her in a fire that burned out one eye and left one hand a claw, while Ged returns home to Gont no longer Archmage, emptied of all his magical power. The "quests" in the novel concern Tenar finding a way to raise her physically and psychologically scarred daughter Therru (trying to cross the void between them on a spiderweb’s bridge of love), and Ged finding a way to live as a normal middle-aged man. Needless to say, this is not the Earthsea of the first trilogy. As Le Guin says in the afterword to Tehanu, "By the time I wrote this book I needed to look at heroics from outside and underneath, from the point of view of the people who are not included. The ones who can't do magic. The ones who don't have shining staffs or swords. Women, kids, the poor, the old, the powerless. Unheroes, ordinary people--my people." As she also explains in her essay "Earthsea Revisioned" (1993), after having become more awakened to feminism in the 1970s she wanted to rectify the default male-centered approach to heroic fantasy with which she'd unconsciously written the first three books. And Tehanu sure features a misogynistic villain, the corrupt wizard Aspen, who embodies the long tradition of viewing women as noisy, troublesome, ignorant, dirty, weak, supporting creatures better off keeping silent before their male betters. From his gendered moral corruption, Aspen sees Tenar as a witch and Therru as her misbegotten familiar, both of whom should be exterminated. There are also the men who use Therru's mother for sex and beat her to make the villagers give her food which she has to give the men, as well as Handy, who has raped Therru and is still drawn to his victim. Less malignant male chauvinists appear, too, men like, disappointingly, Tenar’s own son Spark who view food preparation and dish cleaning as women's work or are unable to hear a woman when she says something that varies from the obedient words they're expecting. Tehanu, however, is no anti-male screed or pro-female polemic. Le Guin depicts sympathetic men who are respectful of women, like the young King Lebannen, who tenderly touches Therru and heals a red hand print left on her flesh by Handy; a grizzled sailor who shyly gives the girl a hand-carved dolphin; Ged and Tenar's teacher and father figure Ogion, who is open to the potential power of Therru ("teach her all"); the sympathetic sorcerer Beech; and, of course, Ged, who may become a good husband and father--and even a hero to Therru when he tells her where to find a wayward goat. (There are other kinds of heroism than those requiring a warrior's sword or a wizard's staff!) Le Guin's characters engage in conversations about gender, many of which, lacking easy conclusions or answers, make us question our assumptions. Once, the earthy and pungent witch Moss tells Tenar that male magic is like a fir tree, grand but easily blown down in a storm, while female magic goes deep down into the earth like a blackberry thicket, and the dissatisfied Tenar says, "It seems to me we make up most of the differences, and then complain about 'em." Another time Ged tells Tenar that a queen is only a she-king, receiving her position and power by men, but Tenar is unconvinced. Despite not much happening in an epic fantasy action way, Tehanu is compelling because of how movingly Le Guin depicts the relationship between Tenar and Therru. Tenar desperately wants her to be safe and happy and healthy and to know that what happened to her wasn't her fault and that her scars are not her and that she's beautiful and loved, but she also fears that nothing she can say or do can repair the girl’s trauma (“What cannot be mended must be transcended”). The moments when Tenar puts her hand on the sleeping Therru’s face to hide the scar and pretend it's not there, or sleeps with her and dreams of flying like a dragon, or gives her a handmade red dress, or watches her watching Ged watching a kestrel watching some prey, are all terribly poignant. The relationship between middle-aged Tenar and middle-aged Ged is also moving and fulfilling. Finally! And Le Guin does write some suspenseful action scenes, as when Aspen tries to curse Tenar or some men invade her farm one cold night to teach her a lesson. And she also writes some sublime fantasy scenes, like those featuring Therru (who holds a mysterious, terrifying power inchoate inside her and can see the world with her whole eye and Something Else with her scarred eye socket) and the androgynous dragon Kalessin: "Straight to Gont it flew, straight to the Overfell, straight to her. She saw the glitter of rust-black scales and the gleam of the long eye. She saw the red tongue that was a tongue of flame. The stink of burning filled the wind, as with a hissing roar the dragon, turning to land on the shelf of rock, breathed out a sigh of fire. Its feet clashed on the rock. The thorny tail, writhing, rattled, and the wings, scarlet where the sun shone through them, stormed and rustled as they folded down to the mailed flanks. The head turned slowly. The dragon looked at the woman who stood there within reach of its scythe-blade talons. The woman looked at the dragon. She felt the heat of its body." Le Guin not only re-imagines gender in Earthsea here but also its dragons. Dragons and human beings were once one species, but some wanted to be free and wild, and some wanted to be stable and accumulate things, so they grew apart, only now, still, some atavistic types are immanent beings neither dragon nor human, but potentially either. To find out what Therru will become, we'll need to read the sixth book of Earthsea… Anyway, Tehanu is a beautiful, moving, terrible, funny, and human novel, and the audiobook reader Jenny Sterlin enhances all its best qualities with her savory voice and intelligence and empathy. View all my reviews
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Jefferson Peters
This blog is for book reviews. Please feel free to comment on any of the reviews! Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
Jefferson's books
by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
|
My Fukuoka University