They're SO GOOD and yeah, I just despair that I will never write that well :)
I can really see why she revisited them later for reasons of feminism, though--I'm not sure how she could be so thoughtful about POC in Earthsea, and at the same time having women be so invisible
When I last reread, I was struck by Vetch and Yarrow -- Vetch is so condescending to Yarrow, in a way that to my grown-up self is rather disturbing, especially given that we've up until then seen Vetch as a really nice person. It's interesting because she's such an incisive observer of culture, she observes and writes it so well -- like, you could imagine her writing the same thing twenty years hence, because the observation is spot on, that's how it happens in a patriarchal society. It's just that twenty years on she would have more awareness of the implications of what she was writing, I think.
I mean, yes, The Tombs of Atuan very much do pass the Bechdel test, but see: unwittingly serving evil, and having a man come in and release Tenar from that.
When I did my last reread, it was also the first reread after having a daughter, and I couldn't help noticing that the main storyline of Atuan is "older man talks teenage girl into leaving her home and culture and running away with him." I mean... I get that Le Guin was working with some archetypes about growing up and sex and so on, but gosh.
I'm not so sure, though: if you look at The Left Hand of Darkness, which is written about the same time, it hasn't got a simpler style that I can see.
This is a good point! When I did my Le Guin dive a few years back, for some reason Left Hand was not one of the books I reread, which is I guess why I didn't pick up on it (but now that you mention(ed) it, I also get that stylistic feel from her earlier short stories, like "Nine Lives," and not from her later ones). I do find her later work more spare -- it's still great writing, but in sort of a harder and simpler way.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2024-01-04 03:29 am (UTC)I can really see why she revisited them later for reasons of feminism, though--I'm not sure how she could be so thoughtful about POC in Earthsea, and at the same time having women be so invisible
When I last reread, I was struck by Vetch and Yarrow -- Vetch is so condescending to Yarrow, in a way that to my grown-up self is rather disturbing, especially given that we've up until then seen Vetch as a really nice person. It's interesting because she's such an incisive observer of culture, she observes and writes it so well -- like, you could imagine her writing the same thing twenty years hence, because the observation is spot on, that's how it happens in a patriarchal society. It's just that twenty years on she would have more awareness of the implications of what she was writing, I think.
I mean, yes, The Tombs of Atuan very much do pass the Bechdel test, but see: unwittingly serving evil, and having a man come in and release Tenar from that.
When I did my last reread, it was also the first reread after having a daughter, and I couldn't help noticing that the main storyline of Atuan is "older man talks teenage girl into leaving her home and culture and running away with him." I mean... I get that Le Guin was working with some archetypes about growing up and sex and so on, but gosh.
I'm not so sure, though: if you look at The Left Hand of Darkness, which is written about the same time, it hasn't got a simpler style that I can see.
This is a good point! When I did my Le Guin dive a few years back, for some reason Left Hand was not one of the books I reread, which is I guess why I didn't pick up on it (but now that you mention(ed) it, I also get that stylistic feel from her earlier short stories, like "Nine Lives," and not from her later ones). I do find her later work more spare -- it's still great writing, but in sort of a harder and simpler way.