Confused by Ursula K. LeGuin's Tehanu

[Bolandoando]

Hey, I'm currently reading all of the Books of Earthsea and, while I've moved past it now, I am still v v confused by a particular chapter in Tehanu. In chapter 8, the witch Moss and Tenar have a conversation that confuses the hell out of me. It eventually leads into a discussion about love spells and the division between wizards and witches but it's the initial conversation that is never cleared up and I'm still annoyed by how odd and indecipherable it is to me. I'll just quote it:
"It's a queer thing for an old man to be a boy of fifteen, no doubt!"
Tenar almost said, "What are you talking about, Moss?"--but something prevented her. She realized that she had been listening for Ged to come into the house from his roaming on the mountainside, that she was listening for the sound of his voice, that her body denied his absence. She glanced suddenly over at the witch, a shapeless lump of black perched on Ogion's chair by the empty hearth.
"Ah!" she said, a great many thoughts suddenly coming into her mind all at once.
"That's why," she said. "That's why I never--"
After a quite long silence, she said, "Do they--do wizards--is it a spell?"
"Surely, surely, dearie," said Moss. "They witch 'emselves. Some'll tell you they make a trade-off, like a marriage turned backward, with vows and all, and so get their power then. But to me that's got a wrong sound to it, like a dealing with the Old Powers more than what a true witch deals with. And the old mage, he told me they did no such thing. Though I've known some woman witches to do it, and come to no great harm by it."
"The ones who brought me up did that, promising virginity.
"Oh, aye, no men, you told me, and them yurnix. Terrible!"
"But why, but why--why did I never think--"
The witch laughed aloud. "Because that's the power of 'em, dearie. You don't think! You can't. And nor do they, once they've set their spell. How could they? Given their power? It wouldn't do, would do, it wouldn't do. You don't get without you give as much. That's true for all, surely. So they know that, the witch men, the men of power, they know that better than any. But then, you know it's an uneasy thing for a man not to be a man, no matter if he can call the sun from the sky. And so they put it right out of their mind, with their spells of binding. And truly so. Even in these bad times we've been having, with the spells going wrong and all, I haven't yet heard of a wizard breaking those spells, seeking to use his power for his body's lust. Even the worst would fear to. O' course, there's those will work illusions, but they only fool 'emselves. And there's witch men of little account, witch-tinkers and the like, some of them'll try their own spells of beguilement on country women, but for all I can see, those spells don't amount to much. What it is, is the one power's as great as the other, and each goes its own way. That's how I see it."

When I read this the first time, I was completely bewildered and had to put the book down and go to sleep I was so mad that I didn't understand what was happening. After reading it over maybe 5-6 times and writing out the dialogue here, I think it's clearing up for me. These women are talking about a binding spell that wizards and diminutive sorcerers place on themselves so that they don't feel any lust and aren't distracted by women or any sexual feelings. I still think it's odd for Moss to v randomly say that Ged is a "boy of fifteen" though that's in character for her, and that line is explained later when Tenar mentions it to Ged and he agrees that without his powers, he does feel quite new and like he has to discover himself anew, but boy did this line throw me off. I thought for a second that Ged had managed to disguise himself as a young boy. And now I think I understand completely those half sentences spoken by Tenar. A recurring thought for her was how odd it was that she had never, in all her time of knowing Ogion and Ged, touched them in any intimate way. Odd that they knew each other so well and had never touched, odd that she hadn't noticed this oddness. I get it now wow. She only kissed Ged's face after he had lost his powers and, beforehand, felt moments with Ged where she wanted to touch him but refrained from doing so for unknown, now known, reasons. Okay. I think I answered my own question lol. I'll still post this in case someone else has the same confusion.

 

[The Judge]

Yep, when she says "to be a boy of fifteen" she means inside -- ie his hormones raging all over the place and not able to look at a pretty woman** without getting aroused and wanting to get hot and sweaty with her. (I've never been a boy of 15 so I can't say how accurate that is!)


** in this case, or presumably, a handsome man in others

 

[Extollager]

I’ve finished a second reading, after 30 years, of Le Guin’s “Last Book of Earthsea” (as the dust jacket on the library copy I read says), Tehanu.

As I was reading, Swinburne’s couplet about Wilkie Collins came to mind: “What brought good Wilkie’s genius nigh perdition? / Some demon whispered—‘Wilkie! have a mission.’” Wilkie Collins had been a clever inventor of suspenseful plots, but he took up social issues in his fiction, in a way readers found to be detrimental.

Tehanu attempts to unite Earthsea fantasy with late 20th-century Feminism. Le Guin is concerned with evil, which is seen as something coming from maleness; because of an incomprehensible fear of women, men hate women and delight in cruelty to them. Some men, without perpetrating physical violence, do not understand women and do not listen to them and hurt them thus.

The book felt, as I read it, like an afterthought, which I suppose it was. Or I could say that it feels like fanfic – as if a different author, one with considerable literary skills, had appropriated the “Earthsea universe” for her own purposes. I said “fanfic.” The romance between Tenar and Ged did feel to me a little like a fanfic romance -- the sort of thing bright girls used to write about Mr. Spock. The so-competent rescuer, the hero, is humbled now, and his feelings at last open up to the woman who has long loved him. Of course Le Guin’s love story is more and better than a Mary Sue. But I was not sure that the romance rang true.

While the original trilogy was marketed for youngsters but enjoyed too by their elders, Tehanu is about violence against women and that limits its appropriate audience.

There may be a problem here that is a danger for authors who possess impressive fantasy-writing gifts, of not leaving well alone. Mervyn Peake intended to write an indefinite series of books about Titus; but does anyone think these would have had anything like the energy and invention of the two long novels set in Gormenghast and its environs? Alan Garner wrote The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, a captivating topographic fantasy; already in The Moon of Gomrath one senses that he’s susceptible to an agenda (basically a proto-New Age outlook that he didn’t continue to adhere to), and many years later he returned to write Boneland, the (to me unreadable) third book about Colin and Susan.

I’ve not read more by Le Guin than I have read, but my impression is that her center of gravity shifted sometime after she wrote the first three Earthsea books. One might compare my favorite of her non-Earthsea books, The Lathe of Heaven (1971), and her pro-abortion speech, “What It Was Like.” The 2004 address seems to suggest a great change in her philosophy, a shift towards a more conventional outlook. (After I read the address, I wrote about 1500 words about the two works, but it would come under ban here at Chrons.)

It was good to give Tehanu a second chance after so many years, but while it may be respected, it doesn’t make me feel inclined to read the two Earthsea books Le Guin published after it.

 

[hitmouse]

I’ve finished a second reading, after 30 years, of Le Guin’s “Last Book of Earthsea” (as the dust jacket on the library copy I read says), Tehanu.

As I was reading, Swinburne’s couplet about Wilkie Collins came to mind: “What brought good Wilkie’s genius nigh perdition? / Some demon whispered—‘Wilkie! have a mission.’” Wilkie Collins had been a clever inventor of suspenseful plots, but he took up social issues in his fiction, in a way readers found to be detrimental.

Tehanu attempts to unite Earthsea fantasy with late 20th-century Feminism. Le Guin is concerned with evil, which is seen as something coming from maleness; because of an incomprehensible fear of women, men hate women and delight in cruelty to them. Some men, without perpetrating physical violence, do not understand women and do not listen to them and hurt them thus.

The book felt, as I read it, like an afterthought, which I suppose it was. Or I could say that it feels like fanfic – as if a different author, one with considerable literary skills, had appropriated the “Earthsea universe” for her own purposes. I said “fanfic.” The romance between Tenar and Ged did feel to me a little like a fanfic romance -- the sort of thing bright girls used to write about Mr. Spock. The so-competent rescuer, the hero, is humbled now, and his feelings at last open up to the woman who has long loved him. Of course Le Guin’s love story is more and better than a Mary Sue. But I was not sure that the romance rang true.

While the original trilogy was marketed for youngsters but enjoyed too by their elders, Tehanu is about violence against women and that limits its appropriate audience.

There may be a problem here that is a danger for authors who possess impressive fantasy-writing gifts, of not leaving well alone. Mervyn Peake intended to write an indefinite series of books about Titus; but does anyone think these would have had anything like the energy and invention of the two long novels set in Gormenghast and its environs? Alan Garner wrote The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, a captivating topographic fantasy; already in The Moon of Gomrath one senses that he’s susceptible to an agenda (basically a proto-New Age outlook that he didn’t continue to adhere to), and many years later he returned to write Boneland, the (to me unreadable) third book about Colin and Susan.

I’ve not read more by Le Guin than I have read, but my impression is that her center of gravity shifted sometime after she wrote the first three Earthsea books. One might compare my favorite of her non-Earthsea books, The Lathe of Heaven (1971), and her pro-abortion speech, “What It Was Like.” The 2004 address seems to suggest a great change in her philosophy, a shift towards a more conventional outlook. (After I read the address, I wrote about 1500 words about the two works, but it would come under ban here at Chrons.)

It was good to give Tehanu a second chance after so many years, but while it may be respected, it doesn’t make me feel inclined to read the two Earthsea books Le Guin published after it.

I gave up about halfway through Tehanu. I felt that le Guin returned to Earthsea, which were formative childhood books for me, after many years with a new agenda which I found irritating, not so much for the agenda itself, but for the fact that she had done it to my books. Author’s prerogative of course, and mine as the reader.

 

[HareBrain]

It's definitely not a children's book, which might be why I now prefer it to the others (apart from The Tombs of Atuan, perhaps). But I didn't like it much either first time I read it, which was just after I'd read the original trilogy. It works better on its own.

 

[Extollager]

I gave up about halfway through Tehanu. I felt that le Guin returned to Earthsea, which were formative childhood books for me, after many years with a new agenda which I found irritating, not so much for the agenda itself, but for the fact that she had done it to my books. Author’s prerogative of course, and mine as the reader.

I should say that I am grateful to Le Guin in that, in Tehanu, she seems to have retained what might be called an "essentialist" understanding of male and female, rather than adopting the radical feminist notion expressed in Beauvoir, that "one is not born, but becomes, a woman" in a sort of social conspiracy exerted by men and so on. Le Guin isn't too far from the idea of a conspiracy by men against women, but retains -- I think -- a sense of the traditional recognition of real difference that's more than obvious bodily differences. That, when she wrote Tehanu, she had taken on board some ideas she had not fully assimilated with her earlier "Taoist" understanding of human nature, I suspect; and I have my doubts about whether or not the traditional metaphysic can assimilate modern Feminism.

 

[Hugh]

I've posted about Tehanu before. Basically when it first came out I devoured it straightaway and was both disappointed and mystified despite immediately re-reading and re-reading. Years later I read it again and wondered what I'd been chuntering on about, as not only did it now make sense, but some of the passages touched into my inner world (and still do), in much the same way as the trilogy had done.
However, I don't remember the two later volumes as working as well as the first four - as said above, it seemed to me that by then she was trying to shoehorn her increasing interest in Taoism into the Earthsea universe, and sadly this was more of an intellectual exercise than a natural evolution.

 

[farntfar]

I must read it again, in the light of the comments made here.
It was some time ago, and I do remember being a little lost during much of the middle section of Tehanu, although I can't remember why.
However, I did find the following two books mostly cleared up the main question I felt Tehanu had asked, which was the relationship between men and dragons. Indeed, they seemed to both answer that question and draw a line under the whole question, and the history of the archipelago.
I agree that those two books were less exciting as stories than the original trilogy, but they offered some interesting, and as you say, more adult discussions.
Questions of the different approaches of men and women to "the art magic", and the effective annexation of serious magic by men, portrayed in the trilogy, seemed to be well discussed there.
Knowing a little of Le Guin's personal history, it had surprised me that this was not discussed earlier, or at least dealt with differently, but I can suppose that her own thoughts evolved between the two groups.

 

[Extollager]

I've posted about Tehanu before. Basically when it first came out I devoured it straightaway and was both disappointed and mystified despite immediately re-reading and re-reading. Years later I read it again and wondered what I'd been chuntering on about, as not only did it now make sense, but some of the passages touched into my inner world (and still do), in much the same way as the trilogy had done.
However, I don't remember the two later volumes as working as well as the first four - as said above, it seemed to me that by then she was trying to shoehorn her increasing interest in Taoism into the Earthsea universe, and sadly this was more of an intellectual exercise than a natural evolution.

Hugh, wasn't it the case that Earthsea was "Taoist" from the beginning, but that Le Guin later tried "to shoehorn" a feminist outlook into it?

My rereading of Tehanu was spurred by mail and phone conversations with a friend with experience of mythopoeic fantasy going back to reading Tolkien in the 1950s. I thought I'd go ahead and give Tehanu another try. But I admit that, when, over the phone, he read to me from Moss's remarks (in the Bettering" chapter), "'Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen, mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island... I go back into the dark! Before the moon, I was. No one knows... what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power,'" etc. I was reminded of my days in southern Oregon, when Lilith Babylon was a community figure. (I used to wonder what name was on her birth certificate.)

If it's not getting too far from the subject of Le Guin's novel, I'd say that Moss's remarks seem to me to link up with a modern (not a traditional) notion of goddesses. The linked essay below might interest people who are interested in a critique of that idea. I realize that Chrons might not be the place for discussion thereof, or maybe it would be, but my point is that Le Guin's character sure sounds (to me) like she is to be taken as a mouthpiece for the author, and her remarks, while they do not refer to a feminist goddess theology, do seem akin to it, with this about Moss/woman being older than the moon, and boundless or of unknown boundaries, and possessing mysterious power. Moss seems to worship a goddess within with whom she possesses an identity. It does definitely seem to me that something like this was a noticeable strain in southern Oregon's New Age scene. Reading Tehanu, then, takes me out of Earthsea, which in the original trilogy seems to have a mythopoeic secondary world quality akin to that of Middle-earth and Narnia, and into that scene of the goddess jewelry and books and meetings at the Unitarian church and so on.

London Goddess Purée

An exhibition at the British Museum seeks to celebrate feminine power, but the goddesses on display are more likely to be products of female oppression.

comment.org

 

[Hugh]

Hugh, wasn't it the case that Earthsea was "Taoist" from the beginning, but that Le Guin later tried "to shoehorn" a feminist outlook into it?

My rereading of Tehanu was spurred by mail and phone conversations with a friend with experience of mythopoeic fantasy going back to reading Tolkien in the 1950s. I thought I'd go ahead and give Tehanu another try. But I admit that, when, over the phone, he read to me from Moss's remarks (in the Bettering" chapter), "'Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen, mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island... I go back into the dark! Before the moon, I was. No one knows... what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power,'" etc. I was reminded of my days in southern Oregon, when Lilith Babylon was a community figure. (I used to wonder what name was on her birth certificate.)

If it's not getting too far from the subject of Le Guin's novel, I'd say that Moss's remarks seem to me to link up with a modern (not a traditional) notion of goddesses. The linked essay below might interest people who are interested in a critique of that idea. I realize that Chrons might not be the place for discussion thereof, or maybe it would be, but my point is that Le Guin's character sure sounds (to me) like she is to be taken as a mouthpiece for the author, and her remarks, while they do not refer to a feminist goddess theology, do seem akin to it, with this about Moss/woman being older than the moon, and boundless or of unknown boundaries, and possessing mysterious power. Moss seems to worship a goddess within with whom she possesses an identity. It does definitely seem to me that something like this was a noticeable strain in southern Oregon's New Age scene. Reading Tehanu, then, takes me out of Earthsea, which in the original trilogy seems to have a mythopoeic secondary world quality akin to that of Middle-earth and Narnia, and into that scene of the goddess jewelry and books and meetings at the Unitarian church and so on.

London Goddess Purée

An exhibition at the British Museum seeks to celebrate feminine power, but the goddesses on display are more likely to be products of female oppression.

comment.org

Good points, Dale, and it must be some years now since I last read Tehanu, and I'd completely forgotten about Moss's remarks. That said, without getting the book out from the shelves, I don't think I mind them at all. I seem to remember an interview with Ursula Le G in which she said something along the lines that some years down the line she'd realised how male dominated the trilogy were (despite Atuan) and that she needed to do some re-balancing of the Earthsea world, and that's OK with me. That said, when I first read Tehanu it was a disappointment, the more so as I'd eagerly awaited it.
I don't recall ever thinking of the trilogy as Taoist, but I may have missed that. However I do remember (again without getting the book out) "The Other Wind" as an attempt to bring a Taoist perspective into the Earthsea Universe. Trouble is I read these books, form an impression, then some years down the line can easily find I've got the wrong end of the stick.
I haven't come across the Lilith Babylon of South Oregon, but I suspect she manifests in the UK also.

 

[Extollager]

Yes, Hugh, that's it, isn't it? The original Earthsea trilogy feels like an imaginative whole. Everything in it belongs. But with Tehanu, it seemed to me that Le Guin was doing things to Earthsea. She felt she now "ought to" do something about Earthsea.

She had every right to do so. Earthsea is (in Tolkien's term) a secondary world, the made thing of a gifted creative artist in words. That artist "owns" her secondary world. But whether the reader will feel that she did well to "meddle" could be another matter. I take it there are readers who do feel that Earthsea is better for those post-trilogy works.

I've mentioned Peake and Garner as two other authors who -- from my point of view -- meddled with their invented worlds. Tolkien, whom I revere above them, continued to think about Middle-earth, and felt some dissatisfaction with, or misgivings about, what he had written. You see him wrestling with the matter of the evidently irredeemable Orcs in some writings he left unpublished, for example. I think he did well to leave those things unpublished. If he had resolved them and lived so long, he might have issued a book that was sort of like Further Appendices -- maybe presented as additional Lore from Rivendell. But this implied comparison isn't all that relevant to the question of Le Guin, Garner, & Peake. It's more like what might have happened if Priscilla Tolkien (a social worker) and her father had talked about contemporary English society, and Tolkien had second-guessed himself and had decided to write a sequel to LotR in which monarchism was thrown into question -- perhaps Aragorn abdicated and there were elections in the West, with campaign speeches and ballots, and the mayoralty of the Shire had ceased to be a ceremonial office and had become a modern bureaucratic affair, etc. He'd have had the right to do that but -- !

 

[farntfar]

I take it there are readers who do feel that Earthsea is better for those post-trilogy works.

As perhaps I have already made clear, I would count myself amongst that group. (Similarly on your words above concerning LOTR)
I would happily discuss it further, but I'm sure that by doing so we would cross the boundaries of what we are allowed to talk about here.
I would suggest, therefore that that particular discussion should stop here. Both sides of it have now essentially been stated and further discussion would simply lead to the sort of argument that Brian's ruling is trying to avoid.

 

[Extollager]

An interesting topic strictly within bounds did emerge, having to do with when a "world-builder" fantasist might be well advised to stop adding books. Knowing when to do so might be hard for some!

 

[George Mc]

I’m pleased to have stumbled into this forum about “Tehanu” since it is such a relief to have met at least some people who feel reservations about the fourth novel in the Earthsea sequence.

Admittedly it’s been a while since I read the books so I’m going on what I recall from my reactions at the time.

I think the first three books form a natural series that might be described as traditional children’s literature from the time of the 60s and 70s. I grant that Le Guin was a far more talented and interesting writer than most writing then (and at any other time). But the first three books seem to me to form a logical pattern. The third book had a rather complacent feel of philosophical reflection but it nevertheless served as a decent conclusion. And the central character Ged ends up as a wise elderly wizard with a slightly cynical veneer who disappears into the mountains. Possibly Le Guin had in mind the figure of Lao Tsu, the alleged author of the Tao Te Ching, a book she revered.

But then Le Guin produced “Tehanu” which was significantly written almost twenty years later. Although set in Earthsea and featuring characters from the earlier books, the mood is iconoclastic.

There are two disruptive aspects: First, although the setting is still the magical realm of Earthsea, the atmosphere is grubby and run-down with more than a whiff of something like twentieth century urban decay. Second, and more disruptive still, is that Ged returns but this time with his previous sage irreverence transformed into a sad impotence in which we hear that he, like all wizards, owed his power to virginity. So he has his first sexual relationship and loses his power. I recall a scene in which he has a fight with some ruffians and is pleased that he can fend them off without magic. But from what I recall his self-congratulation has a rather sad and feeble air about it.

It’s difficult to reconcile this figure with the character from the first three books. And I found it hard to avoid the feeling that Le Guin had succumbed to criticism that she hadn’t been “feminist” enough and was trying to make up for it. Of course, it’s her work and she can do what she wants. But I would rather she invented a new fantasy altogether.

When I searched around the net for opinions on “Tehanu” I found a uniform praise for the book and, at the risk of being accused as an old reactionary, I admit that I couldn’t help feeling that this praise was due to the rise of progressive politics. I don’t have a problem with such things but I’m just saying that, in the case of the Earthsea books, Le Guin has derailed her earlier work in a rather contrived manner.

 

[The Judge]

For some reason I never responded to this thread in 2022.

Anyhow, for those who are interested there was an old Earthsea thread in which Tehanu was discussed Earthsea -- my first contribution in 2015 won't help much, though, as it links to my blog which was taken down some years ago now.

Here's my blogged thoughts about Tehanu at the time I read the books (NB SPOILERS AHEAD!!)

Although I loved the writing, by the end of the third story I was getting a bit antsy at the lack of female characters. Granted, the second novel is set in the female enclave of a temple complex, but the thrust of the novel is the intrusion into it of Ged, the main (male) character of books 1 and 3, who is there to steal an artefact, and who also steals away the main female character, Tenar. While the women in that book are written truthfully and with great skill, to me it still felt a male story, in that there's a sense of simply waiting for something to happen before Ged arrives, as if the story only really starts with him, and Ged rescues Tenar from what is in effect a prison. True, he can only save her because she has first saved him, but nonetheless he is older, wiser, calmer, more capable and more accepting, which only highlights her youth and general ignorance in a somewhat paternalistic way. As to books 1 and 3 themselves, good as they are, the women characters can be counted on the fingers of one hand.​

​

Then I got to the fourth novel, Tehanu, and that was a complete revelation – a female book from start to finish, despite the presence of many men in it. Tellingly, of the two important wizards we have seen before, one dies within a few pages and the other has lost his power and is therefore seemingly, in his eyes at least, emasculated (though in fact that loss allows him to become more of a man...). The theme of the novel is very much the hidden power of women, and the abuse of power men exercise over them, not just physical power, though we see and hear of male atrocities, but the constant belittling and devaluing of women's experience. I was also delighted to read the telling details so often ignored by male writers, which, for me, is part of that same masculine arrogance that proclaims male interests and activities are more important than those of women and therefore more deserving of space in a novel. Wonderful.​

​

As I remarked in the earlier thread, it may be that I had a different reaction because I hadn't read it in the 70s as others did, so it wasn't spoiling any childhood memories, plus I was coming to it with very different expectations not merely due to my own (advanced...) age.

 

[Toby Frost]

I was also delighted to read the telling details so often ignored by male writers, which, for me, is part of that same masculine arrogance that proclaims male interests and activities are more important than those of women and therefore more deserving of space in a novel.

Can you give some examples of this, please?

 

[The Judge]

Can you give some examples of this, please?

Eek! It's12 years since I read it, so it's a minor miracle I actually remember that I have read it!

So, no, no specifics at this point, but almost certainly they would involve matters surrounding food and keeping the house, and activities like mending clothes or finer sewing, if those are mentioned.

I might get it out and have another read if I can clear part of my TBR backlog, and see if I can pinpoint details.

 

[Toby Frost]

Hmm, that's probably not a fair question, then. Fair enough.

 

[Hugh]

I think the first three books form a natural series that might be described as traditional children’s literature from the time of the 60s and 70s. I grant that Le Guin was a far more talented and interesting writer than most writing then (and at any other time). But the first three books seem to me to form a logical pattern. The third book had a rather complacent feel of philosophical reflection but it nevertheless served as a decent conclusion. And the central character Ged ends up as a wise elderly wizard with a slightly cynical veneer who disappears into the mountains. Possibly Le Guin had in mind the figure of Lao Tsu, the alleged author of the Tao Te Ching, a book she revered.

But then Le Guin produced “Tehanu” which was significantly written almost twenty years later. Although set in Earthsea and featuring characters from the earlier books, the mood is iconoclastic.

There are two disruptive aspects: First, although the setting is still the magical realm of Earthsea, the atmosphere is grubby and run-down with more than a whiff of something like twentieth century urban decay. Second, and more disruptive still, is that Ged returns but this time with his previous sage irreverence transformed into a sad impotence in which we hear that he, like all wizards, owed his power to virginity. So he has his first sexual relationship and loses his power. I recall a scene in which he has a fight with some ruffians and is pleased that he can fend them off without magic. But from what I recall his self-congratulation has a rather sad and feeble air about it.

It’s difficult to reconcile this figure with the character from the first three books. And I found it hard to avoid the feeling that Le Guin had succumbed to criticism that she hadn’t been “feminist” enough and was trying to make up for it. Of course, it’s her work and she can do what she wants. But I would rather she invented a new fantasy altogether.

When I searched around the net for opinions on “Tehanu” I found a uniform praise for the book and, at the risk of being accused as an old reactionary, I admit that I couldn’t help feeling that this praise was due to the rise of progressive politics. I don’t have a problem with such things but I’m just saying that, in the case of the Earthsea books, Le Guin has derailed her earlier work in a rather contrived manner.

I've posted about Tehanu several times before, so I'll probably be repeating myself. It's been some years now since I last read it, so I may well mis-remember, but it's now one of my favourite books and one with which I can significantly identify. However, when it was first published I was baffled and disappointed. I re-read it several times trying to understand it and deconstruct it but remained mystified as to what the point of it all was. Maybe ten years later I re-read it and wondered how I so didn't 'get' it before. The change in perspective was probably due to having got some years older and to having heard many stories of sexual and physical abuse in the intervening years. Now, in my 70s, I've lost much of the omnipotence and narcissism (well, some of it perhaps) of youth and can identify easily with the helplessness/uselessness of Ged when faced with the brutality and cleverness of others and the challenges of modern society. I also truly love the way the young girl Therru is able to access the dragon within herself despite, or because of, being so deeply wounded. I think there's a great secret in that.
I believe there's a parallel with Shakespeare's Tempest. At the end, Prospero is going to break his magic staff and bury his magical tomes deep in the sea. He's going to become an ordinary human. Of course we don't learn what becoming an ordinary human will be like for him, but I think we can assume it will involve becoming more vulnerable without his magical allies such as Ariel at his beck and call.
Likewise Ged loses his power at the end of The Farthest Shore after the great confrontation: Arren saw that they had left the mage's staff of yew lying half-buried in the sand; the sea was creeping in to take it. He made to get down for it, but Ged stopped him. "Leave it. I spent all wizardry at that dry spring, Lebannen. I am no mage now." He now becomes ordinary, redundant and essentially unemployable other than his rudimentary childhood farming experience - not that different from many of us.
Then there's the misogyny. I think in the 20 year gap before Tehanu, Le Guin came to accept that life was more real without her own 'staff', and, in becoming more real, she also needed to write about misogyny, not just in Roke, but in everyday life.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I read Tehanu when it first came out, and was deeply impressed by it. I thought it was an important book that explored many important issues which fantasy up until that time tended to ignore, but . . . I can't say that I liked it. The subsequent books pleased me even less.

I felt like, collectively, they were telling me I was wrong to love the original trilogy. Which felt a bit like a slap in the face.

And I didn't really need to be told, so obviously, so urgently (or so it seemed to me) that the gender politics of that world, the attitudes toward men's and women's magics, were seriously skewed in the original books. I could see that for myself, even at a young age. It merely added a touch of realism, reflecting as it did the world I saw around me.

Le Guin, of course, had every right to do what she wanted with her books, her world, her characters. I just wish that if she wanted to write a feminist response to Earthsea (which in itself was an admirable idea) she had decided to create a whole new world where women and women's magic was respected. I think that could have been glorious—had that been what she felt inspired to write. Had she done so merely to please grumpy readers like me, it might have been a disappointment, too.

There is also the possibility that had I read the later books first, and then the original trilogy, I might have had the opposite reaction, and found her early works to be disappointing. But that is something we will never know.