Tehanu

OK, so I've quit procrastinating and started typing...

The first three Earthsea books were written in a relatively short space of time (published 1969-73, IIRC). They were all there when I first picked up A Wizard of Earthsea, maybe just over a decade after its initial publication - the series was complete. Let's face it, there is no requirement for a fourth book. Ged is getting old, his magic is gone, but Earthsea has a King and the Rune of Peace again. The story is over. Then, after a gap of time almost as long as I was old, Tehanu was released.

"??????!!!!!!," I said, loudly, and bought a copy. Maybe Ged gets his magic back, I thought. Maybe he sails the North Reach - or even has to go to Hogenland, I thought. Actually, he goes home, herds some goats and gets married. Imagine my shock! The entire book is set on Gont, there is no quest and Ged just mopes about being miserable. What a heap of rubbish.

Except, of course, this is Ursula LeGuin, so it isn't rubbish (though there are a lot of bad smells) - instead there was quiet excellence and I was being stupid, caught in the pitfall trap made by the gap between expectation and reality.

Tehanu is not epic fantasy. Tough luck. Get over it. That might take a long time, though. Every time I re-read the Earthsea books after 1990, I was tempted to just not bother with Tehanu but each time I liked it more than the previous time, until, by the time The Other Wind was released it did not occur to me skip its predecessor.

How do I feel this time round? I feel that there are the Earthsea books and there are the New Earthsea books and that Tehanu is the first of these, even though it was never planned either at the time of A Wizard of Earthsea or that two more books would come after it. The latter three books seem to be a reaction to the first three and to epic fantasy in general. Put another way, the Great Feminist Revision of Earthsea started here, though in a small, quiet way, with one woman taking in an abused child and a lost man mourning for his lost power.

The discussion of the roles of women in Archipeligan society is clearly a transposed discussion of women's roles back here in the "real" world as well as in epic fantasy generally. Tenar's position of mother, farm manager and labourer goes undervalued, hardly noticed. It may as well be called, "housewife." It's very sexist, as is the distinction between wizards (men) and witches (women). Wizards are powerful, educated, noble, wise. Witches are dirty, poor, weak and evil. Unfortunately, the wizards aren't always wise or noble; sometimes they are stupid, self-serving and nasty and if the witches are often selfish, at least they haven't been seeking immortality or breaking the natural order with their magic. When Ged and Tenar discuss this, hearing Ged spout a heap of sexist nonsense is painful. I expect better from him. He's just a victim of his education, though and it is hard to question everything you've been taught and am I any different, really? I've been brought up to believe that woman deserve respect and equal opportunity, equal reward, that child-rearing and managing a home are important and hard jobs. I didn't come to that conclusion in the face of enormous pressure to conform to the contrary.

I can now relate to Ged's situation better, too. It must be difficult to step from being the most powerful man in the world to being weaker than most, unprepared and in but a moment. It is unsurprising and natural that he should grieve for what he has lost. It is lucky for him that he finds Tenar, who gives him something different in its place: love. Their romance seems entirely natural, indeed somehow incipient in The Tombs of Atuan.

So, as usual LeGuin gives deep insight and characterisation and makes a powerful, important point, but this book only gets three stars, because of LeGuin's one weakness - the plotting. Here, the plot rambles, disappears, comes back, goes again then sort of piles up at the edge of a cliff and gets squashed under Kalessin's belly. This lack of narrative drive is the sole flaw in the book, which, thankfully, despite its themes, never deteriorates into mere male-bashing. It was an anti-climactic end to the series, though - I'm so glad that The Last Book of Earthsea turned out to be a terrible misnomer.