Achieving the Balance
Oct. 11th, 2011 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselApril 2011
The Earthsea Quartet - Ursula Le Guin - Puffin, 1993
* * * *
As recent reviews will have made clear, I am a cartophile. I still have the huge maps that I created for roleplaying campaigns in my teenage years and if a map is provided in a novel, I will refer to it frequently to build up my mental picture. There is something really exciting about seeing a map full of strange names and icons and wondering what might be found there.
This goes some way to explaining why I have only half-read the Earthsea Quartet before now. I found The Tombs of Atuan, the second in the series, in the school library and was immediately attracted to the map of the labyrinth at the front, with its mysterious rooms marked as "Great Treasure", "The Painted Room" and "The Room of Chains". My teenage brain imagined an exciting chase through the tunnels as our sword-clad hero, chased by undead hordes, leaps over the carefully marked bottomless pit as he escapes with the magical Sword of Something Or Other to the world above.
In the event, the book turned out to be rather different, being a thoughtful story about Tenar, an adolescent girl chosen to be priestess of the tombs, and her rescue of - and by - the wizard Ged. I don't recall being disappointed by it, and clearly liked it enough that I read the following book, The Farthest Shore, about which, however, I remembered very little except for the Land of the Dead. The first volume wasn't available at school and I never felt it was necessary to go back to it. Now that the whole trilogy and Tehanu, its companion piece, is available in a single volume, it seemed sensible to read the whole thing again.
I'm glad I did, though I still think that I started with the best book. A Wizard of Earthsea is a picaresque that introduces us to the archipelago that makes up the world. It's an impressively detailed map with hundreds of little islands and a wide variety of different peoples to match. There is not much sense of history - probably just as well, as it would have been insanely complicated - but the trade and the true-name-based magic feel just right. We are introduced to Ged as a young upcoming wizard, who out of pride summons and inadvertently releases a Shadow with the capability of taking over a person and turning them into a gebbeth. He spends the rest of the book chasing or being chased by the shadow which involves a cook's tour of the major islands of Earthsea.
It's a satisfying tale with things to say about maturity and responsibility for one's actions, but is slightly let down by the nebulous nature of the Shadow. Clearly becoming a gebbeth is a bad thing, but we are never shown exactly what they are capable of. This somewhat blunts the dramatic tension.
The Tombs of Atuan was pretty much as I remembered it, and if anything I enjoyed it more the second time around. Keeping Ged off-stage for so much of it was a shrewd move and gives Tenar's character and the stultifying and oppressive atmosphere of the Old Powers and their cult time to develop. Again, the maguffin - the ring of Erreth-Akbe - is a bit nebulous (it brings peace, but exactly how is unelaborated), but it matters less since it is not the main point of the plot. I particularly liked the subtle way in which Tenar's major crush on Ged is depicted (which I missed the first time - hey, I went to a boys-only school). Ged's response seemed a little unnatural, but this is explained subsequently in Tehanu. The artificiality of the catacomb maze map, with its numerous and pointless dead ends, also now seems strange, but thinking about it I realised that it is a subtle comment on just how evil the Old Powers are. To construct the tunnels would have taken hundreds of humans working in appalling conditions. To cause so many lives to be wasted on constructing tunnels that serve no practical purpose is a wicked thing to do.
The Farthest Shore was different from my memory of it - for one thing, I had remembered the lands of the dead as being the shore of the title, but in fact it is a valley in a mountainous region. The book is a clear companion to A Wizard of Earthsea and is also a picaresque, this time to stop an enemy who is sucking the magic and life out of Earthsea, causing magicians to forget their spells and people to become shallow and self-serving. Ged is accompanied by Arren, a distant descendant of one of the last kings of Earthsea. Again, the story is satisfying and this time the threat is clearly illustrated, but the final confrontation felt a little lacking in epicness.
So to Tehanu. To be honest, I had expected to hate this book, written in what I think of as Le Guin's "all men are bastards" phase. I feared that she might try to re-write the rules of Earthsea from a feminist perspective and while this is true, she does at least respect the plot and setting of her earlier works. Just as The Farthest Shore reprises A Wizard of Earthsea, so Tehanu follows The Tombs of Atuan with its one small setting (the island of Gont) and obsessive focus on daily life. The story is set at the end of The Farthest Shore and follows Tenar, now a widow with two grown-up children who have left home, as she takes in Therru, a girl who has been assaulted by one of the men in her family and then badly burned in a fire. She has to juggle caring for her with looking after Ged's old mentor Ogion, and eventually Ged himself.
I've remarked before that I have a lot of time for everyday fantasy and one of the reasons I like The Tombs of Atuan so much is that it succeeds in making the daily details of the lives of the priestesses and their servants compelling. Here, however, it doesn't work as well. One reason is that the map is dull. The Tombs of Atuan is a magnificent and atmospheric location that you never forget, whereas Gont is a standard-issue fantasyland of pseudo-mediaeval farms and villages with no features to catch the interest.
The same is true of the story. Yes, I get it - Tenar is the true hero for being an ordinary person who tries to do good by caring for others, as women have always done. The problem is that in accordance with her essentialist (Daoist?) take on gender differences, Le Guin implies that she is a hero because of who she is rather than what she does. She doesn't develop during the story (compare and contrast Ged's maturation in A Wizard of Earthsea, Tenar's recognition of the limitations of her environment in The Tombs of Atuan, and Arren's assumption of his responsibilities in The Farthest Shore) which makes her uncompelling as a viewpoint character. It doesn't help that when she does respond to events, she makes some foolish decisions - "there are some dangerous people about, so I'll just go home to my isolated farmhouse and shut the door, and everything will be fine" - which seem out of keeping with the resourceful girl of The Tombs of Atuan.
The changes in Ged's character are even worse and are the one place where Le Guin's revisionism genuinely does damage to her previous books. She effectively regresses him to a teenager, making him unable to cope with his changed circumstances and burdening him with a burgeoning sexuality. No, no, no! Ged's most distinguishing feature is that he has learned wisdom and self-knowledge from his mistakes in the first book. He has been hurt, but would adapt. To make him unable to progress without Tenar's help is - and I am fully aware of the irony of this word - patronising.
My feeling is that this is a transitional book. Le Guin had figured out how to write female characters in her revised view of the world, but hadn't worked out what to do about men. It is unfortunate that she chose some of her most enduring characters as a test run for her revisionism (and disappointing that to examine and challenge stereotypical gender roles she had to use an equally stereotypical view of travellers as evil and criminal). I am pleased that she has gone on to write other stories set in the Earthsea world because to end on this one would have been a shame. Le Guin always strives for balance and harmony, but here she has not achieved it. It will be interesting to see if she manages the reconciliation of opposites as she does triumphantly in Lavinia, and whether the other question that is raised here - heroism from intrinsic nature versus moral development - can be resolved in a way that makes for a good read. And I am hoping for some more interesting maps.
The Earthsea Quartet - Ursula Le Guin - Puffin, 1993
* * * *
As recent reviews will have made clear, I am a cartophile. I still have the huge maps that I created for roleplaying campaigns in my teenage years and if a map is provided in a novel, I will refer to it frequently to build up my mental picture. There is something really exciting about seeing a map full of strange names and icons and wondering what might be found there.
This goes some way to explaining why I have only half-read the Earthsea Quartet before now. I found The Tombs of Atuan, the second in the series, in the school library and was immediately attracted to the map of the labyrinth at the front, with its mysterious rooms marked as "Great Treasure", "The Painted Room" and "The Room of Chains". My teenage brain imagined an exciting chase through the tunnels as our sword-clad hero, chased by undead hordes, leaps over the carefully marked bottomless pit as he escapes with the magical Sword of Something Or Other to the world above.
In the event, the book turned out to be rather different, being a thoughtful story about Tenar, an adolescent girl chosen to be priestess of the tombs, and her rescue of - and by - the wizard Ged. I don't recall being disappointed by it, and clearly liked it enough that I read the following book, The Farthest Shore, about which, however, I remembered very little except for the Land of the Dead. The first volume wasn't available at school and I never felt it was necessary to go back to it. Now that the whole trilogy and Tehanu, its companion piece, is available in a single volume, it seemed sensible to read the whole thing again.
I'm glad I did, though I still think that I started with the best book. A Wizard of Earthsea is a picaresque that introduces us to the archipelago that makes up the world. It's an impressively detailed map with hundreds of little islands and a wide variety of different peoples to match. There is not much sense of history - probably just as well, as it would have been insanely complicated - but the trade and the true-name-based magic feel just right. We are introduced to Ged as a young upcoming wizard, who out of pride summons and inadvertently releases a Shadow with the capability of taking over a person and turning them into a gebbeth. He spends the rest of the book chasing or being chased by the shadow which involves a cook's tour of the major islands of Earthsea.
It's a satisfying tale with things to say about maturity and responsibility for one's actions, but is slightly let down by the nebulous nature of the Shadow. Clearly becoming a gebbeth is a bad thing, but we are never shown exactly what they are capable of. This somewhat blunts the dramatic tension.
The Tombs of Atuan was pretty much as I remembered it, and if anything I enjoyed it more the second time around. Keeping Ged off-stage for so much of it was a shrewd move and gives Tenar's character and the stultifying and oppressive atmosphere of the Old Powers and their cult time to develop. Again, the maguffin - the ring of Erreth-Akbe - is a bit nebulous (it brings peace, but exactly how is unelaborated), but it matters less since it is not the main point of the plot. I particularly liked the subtle way in which Tenar's major crush on Ged is depicted (which I missed the first time - hey, I went to a boys-only school). Ged's response seemed a little unnatural, but this is explained subsequently in Tehanu. The artificiality of the catacomb maze map, with its numerous and pointless dead ends, also now seems strange, but thinking about it I realised that it is a subtle comment on just how evil the Old Powers are. To construct the tunnels would have taken hundreds of humans working in appalling conditions. To cause so many lives to be wasted on constructing tunnels that serve no practical purpose is a wicked thing to do.
The Farthest Shore was different from my memory of it - for one thing, I had remembered the lands of the dead as being the shore of the title, but in fact it is a valley in a mountainous region. The book is a clear companion to A Wizard of Earthsea and is also a picaresque, this time to stop an enemy who is sucking the magic and life out of Earthsea, causing magicians to forget their spells and people to become shallow and self-serving. Ged is accompanied by Arren, a distant descendant of one of the last kings of Earthsea. Again, the story is satisfying and this time the threat is clearly illustrated, but the final confrontation felt a little lacking in epicness.
So to Tehanu. To be honest, I had expected to hate this book, written in what I think of as Le Guin's "all men are bastards" phase. I feared that she might try to re-write the rules of Earthsea from a feminist perspective and while this is true, she does at least respect the plot and setting of her earlier works. Just as The Farthest Shore reprises A Wizard of Earthsea, so Tehanu follows The Tombs of Atuan with its one small setting (the island of Gont) and obsessive focus on daily life. The story is set at the end of The Farthest Shore and follows Tenar, now a widow with two grown-up children who have left home, as she takes in Therru, a girl who has been assaulted by one of the men in her family and then badly burned in a fire. She has to juggle caring for her with looking after Ged's old mentor Ogion, and eventually Ged himself.
I've remarked before that I have a lot of time for everyday fantasy and one of the reasons I like The Tombs of Atuan so much is that it succeeds in making the daily details of the lives of the priestesses and their servants compelling. Here, however, it doesn't work as well. One reason is that the map is dull. The Tombs of Atuan is a magnificent and atmospheric location that you never forget, whereas Gont is a standard-issue fantasyland of pseudo-mediaeval farms and villages with no features to catch the interest.
The same is true of the story. Yes, I get it - Tenar is the true hero for being an ordinary person who tries to do good by caring for others, as women have always done. The problem is that in accordance with her essentialist (Daoist?) take on gender differences, Le Guin implies that she is a hero because of who she is rather than what she does. She doesn't develop during the story (compare and contrast Ged's maturation in A Wizard of Earthsea, Tenar's recognition of the limitations of her environment in The Tombs of Atuan, and Arren's assumption of his responsibilities in The Farthest Shore) which makes her uncompelling as a viewpoint character. It doesn't help that when she does respond to events, she makes some foolish decisions - "there are some dangerous people about, so I'll just go home to my isolated farmhouse and shut the door, and everything will be fine" - which seem out of keeping with the resourceful girl of The Tombs of Atuan.
The changes in Ged's character are even worse and are the one place where Le Guin's revisionism genuinely does damage to her previous books. She effectively regresses him to a teenager, making him unable to cope with his changed circumstances and burdening him with a burgeoning sexuality. No, no, no! Ged's most distinguishing feature is that he has learned wisdom and self-knowledge from his mistakes in the first book. He has been hurt, but would adapt. To make him unable to progress without Tenar's help is - and I am fully aware of the irony of this word - patronising.
My feeling is that this is a transitional book. Le Guin had figured out how to write female characters in her revised view of the world, but hadn't worked out what to do about men. It is unfortunate that she chose some of her most enduring characters as a test run for her revisionism (and disappointing that to examine and challenge stereotypical gender roles she had to use an equally stereotypical view of travellers as evil and criminal). I am pleased that she has gone on to write other stories set in the Earthsea world because to end on this one would have been a shame. Le Guin always strives for balance and harmony, but here she has not achieved it. It will be interesting to see if she manages the reconciliation of opposites as she does triumphantly in Lavinia, and whether the other question that is raised here - heroism from intrinsic nature versus moral development - can be resolved in a way that makes for a good read. And I am hoping for some more interesting maps.
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Date: 2011-10-17 10:50 pm (UTC)