Week 3

Note while you are reading A Wizard of Earthsea Le Guin’s depiction of race and gender. Is there anything surprising in this? Why?

I found it surprising that Le Guin, being a woman, chose stereotypical females for her female characters in “A Wizard of Earthsea” published in 1968. But perhaps this is not so surprising when one considers that Fantasy had been shaped by men such as John Ruskin who set the scene for the genre, one that “rejects the modern world for the small, quiet, green one that the peasants knew” (Attebery, 1980, p. 6) and George MacDonald, whose work was also published in the 1800s. These men lived in times which had specific expectations of women. It certainly was not that of ‘adventurer’.

If Le Guin wanted her female characters to be anything but stereotypical, I think she would have had to go against established Fantasy genre expectations, even in the 20th century, and I have to wonder if, as a new writer, her work would have been published if she had. Somehow, I don’t think so. Once she had the readership following, then she would have had more author authority to rid women of their stereotypes in her fantasy world. But this did not happen for about 40 years after “A Wizard from Earthsea” when her work, for example, “Tales from Earthsea” was published (Tax, 2002). Yet even the female character in this work finds an unhappy lot because she has ‘power’ which has been considered the domain of men only, and must face male prejudice as a result (Tax).

Examples of stereotyping of women in “The Wizard of Earthsea” include (with references from Le Guin, 1993; 1968):

Woman as temptress/deceiver: an example is when the daughter of the old Lord of Re Albi tries to charm information about sorcery out of Ged. The girl’s name is not given here. Later in the story we learn she is called Serret, the Lady of the Keep, who tries to deceive not only Ged a second time, but also her husband: “Softly she whispered, ‘You will be mightier than all men, a king among men. You will rule, and I will rule with you” (p. 112).

Woman as no threat: women are easily handled and no threat to men, even when conjured by magic. “I’ll call a woman’s spirit. You need not fear a woman” (p. 62).

Woman as witch/troublemaker/power-less: women as witches are generally meddling in magic of the lower order and not capable or responsible enough to know and handle the strong magic of men. Men only are allowed at the school on Roke to be initiated into the real art. With sorcery comes “glory and the riches and the great power over men” (p. 17), certainly not attainable by the stereotypical female. Ged’s aunt was a witch who “used her crafts to foolish and dubious ends . . . her lore was mere rubbish and humbug, nor did she know the true spells from the false” (p. 16-17). Ged’s aunt was “better at causing sickness, perhaps, than curing it” (p. 17). When Ged is put to the test by the doorkeeper at Roke, he could not get in because his aunt’s spell “was only a witch’s charm” (p. 40).

Yet another example is when Ged goes to heal Pechvarry’s son. A witchwoman has been looking after the ill child. She states: “Lord Wizard, I think this fever is the redfever” (p. 80). The child is seriously ill and she only thinks she knows what’s ailing him. The insinuation here is that if Ged had been called in sooner, he would have known and the boy may have lived. Moreover, a wizard can “shake the balance of the world” (p. 48) or have world power. Women cannot.

Woman as the stay-at-home domestic: throughout the story, the female is in the background doing the usual homely or housewifely duties. “Housewives row across the channel to take a cup of rushwash tea with the neighbour” (p. 76). Ah, yes, where would women be without their gossiping over tea? Yet, Ged has the perceived male traits of “wish for glory, the will to act” (p. 32). Generally, women provide Ged with food, for example, “the fisherman’s wife had given him two loaves of bread and a jar of water” (p. 125), and Yarrow, who prepares the food for Ged’s and her brother’s journey together: “Yarrow on her knees to see if the last batch of cakes baking on the hearth-bricks was getting brown”.

Woman must be beautiful/girlish to have value: a woman’s beauty is seen as important currency as is her youth. The young and beautiful Lady of O is married to an old man, yet she retains her girlishness: she “cried out with pleasure” (p. 54), and “asked childlike, of her stern husband” (p. 54). Women have long hair as a trademark of their femininity. Women’s ‘magic’ is their beauty which bewitches men: “the beauty of the Lady of the Keep confused his mind” (p. 107) and “for her sake all Enlad was laid waste, and the Hero-Mage of Havnor died, and the island Solea sank beneath the sea” (p. 54). In other words, a woman’s bewitching beauty (her only source of real power) is man’s undoing. The Lady of the Keep’s conniving has her husband stating: “And you are a fool, too, woman of Gont, thinking to trick both him [Ged] and me, and rule us both by your beauty” (p. 113).

Woman as unintelligent: woman lack the mental faculties of men. For example, Vetch speaking of Yarrow, “this is my sister, the youngest of us, prettier than I am as you see, but much less clever” (p. 144). What makes this comment worse is that Yarrow accepts his estimation of her. Her reaction: “decorously she bobbed her head and hid her eyes with her hands to show respect, as women did in the East Reach” (p. 145). She shows respect after being disrespected? And, now, the best for last, Yarrow’s self-disparagement: “I wish I could truly understand what you tell me. I am too stupid” (p. 151).

Briefly, here are some of the male stereotypes and race stereotypes that I think exist in “The Wizard of Earthsea” (Le Guin, 1993; 1968):

Male stereotypes can be seen in Ged’s impetuousness as a boy; his desire for adventure; his ability to learn new information; in the fact that he can seek an education and follow his dream; his courage in the face of danger; the need to prove himself; that he is permitted to err and yet is not called ‘stupid’ when he mucks things up (even when another dies because of his actions); that he can leave his home village for adventure and follow a quest; and in the very act of him finishing what he started.

Stereotypes of race: Le Guin shows race through the colour of skin be it red-brown, black, pale white, pale skinned, black-brown, etc. But there is no white dominance here. The Archmage after Nemmerle is Gensher. “Gensher was black-skinned, and his look was black, under thick brows” (p. 67). Ged is red-brown, which goes against the traditional Western ideal of the hero figure. Slaves are common in the story, but don’t seem to be of any particular race. The aggressive Kargads are white with yellow hair who were “in lust of conquest”, but I think it would be a stretch to start making colonial comparisons.

One point of interest is that race is not only inferred on bipedal characters. Dragons are considered “an older race than man” (Le Guin, 1993; 1968, p. 88). So I think race is probably a designation of species rather than of bipedal characters.

The stereotypes, especially the female stereotypes, did not dampen my enjoyment of the piece until I came to Yarrow's comment about herself being too stupid. It seemed an odd thing to write and read artificially as if Le Guin was overly conscious of the expectations of the Fantasy world she had to create, or perhaps this stems from being overly eager to be published. She later revised her attitude to stereotyping (AUT PowerPoint Slides, Week 3).

What are some archetypes (e.g. common character types) of fantasy fiction?

Tax (2002) states that there are specific types of women in the fantasy genre: “absent beloved, evil witch, damsel in distress and girl warrior” (p. 13).

Week Four’s PowerPoint slides give a list of archetypes as named through Jungian psychology. With no question relevant to these in Week Four, I’ve incorporated some of them here. Among them, as I see them in “The Wizard of Earthsea” are:

Hero (Ged): “He or she is the person who transcends ego, but at first, the hero is all ego” (Peterson, 2010).

Wise Old Man (Ogion): “Guidance, knowledge, wisdom” (Cherry, 2010).

Trickster (Serret): “Deceiver, liar, trouble-maker” (Cherry, 2010).

Shadow (the shadow as released by Ged).

I would also add Door Keeper as in the wizard who tends to the door of the school on Roke. This, I think, is typical of Fantasy, where there is someone protecting the way and who has to be ‘got on side’ as it were, or dispensed with. Cherry (2010) refers to this character as the Gatekeeper.

How has fantasy as a genre been defined?

Fantasy is where the impossible in our world becomes possible in worlds created by authors and where characters, beings, things and happenings unnatural in our world exist and occur (Attebery, 1980). As Attebery states, the Fantasy genre is “any narrative which include as a significant part of its make-up some violation of what the author clearly believes to be natural law” (p. 3).

Examples other worldliness in Le Guin's “The Wizard of Earthsea” include:

1) the otak a little creature Ged befriends; 2) Earthsea, a created world which is shown in map form at the beginning of the work;

3) magic throughout the work, including magewind which is called upon to fill the sails of boats and spells to change form, binding spells, and others;

4) the dangerous spirit caught in the stone Terrenon;

5) the doorway to the school at Roke which is made from the ivory tooth of a dragon;

6) the wizard’s staff which is a symbol of his power and a conduit of it.

Given the above, I agree with Attebery (1980) who states that Fantasy “needs consistency. Reader and writer are committed to maintaining the illusion for the entire course of the fiction” (p.3). This is where Le Guin’s skill in Fantasy writing becomes apparent. She not only creates the illusion in the first place, but untiringly maintains the illusion. I think this consistency goes a long way in creating ‘realism’ in her Fantasy world. Without it, the reader would start spotting the inconsistencies and so the illusion would be lost. This would put the reader’s focus on the author and not on the work as the author lost credibility with the reader.

“The Wizard of Earthsea” is an example of High Fantasy where the imagined other world is self-contained and there is a map to show the world (PowerPoint Slides WK 3).

Low Fantasy occurs in the real world but may have links with another world (PowerPoint Slides WK 3). Example: The Indian in the Cupboard series (1980).

Find at least five formative definitions in Attebery (1980).

The development of Fantasy has drawn on a number of elements:

• Oral Marchen of peasants was the earliest form which at times borrowed from the epic and myth (Attebery, 1980).
  
  
• The Grimm brothers instigated the next development by putting the oral stories into written form, so making these stories acceptable to other classes within society (Attebery, 1980).
  
  
• Novel writers developed their own stories as the written form of Marchen did not do the oral tales justice – this commenced with the German Romantics, so creating the “literary fairy tale” (Attebery, 1980, p. 5) and also included the English author John Ruskin whose work incorporates a more sophisticated environment that is integral to the story, and where the story incorporates the author’s viewpoint rather than being bound to the peasant viewpoint or carrying a moral as did Marchen (Attebery, 1980).

In “The Wizard of Earthsea” the environment is quite sophisticated and incorporates the peasant setting. We are given descriptions of villages, for example, Ten Alders, and the surrounding countryside. Le Guin goes to a great deal of trouble to let us know the places around about when Ged is travelling by boat. The descriptive pieces, however, don’t overshadow the characters.

• George MacDonald developed the literary fairy tale by incorporating legend which gave his stories a new type of realism where characters were faced with perils and challenges (Attebery, 1980).

In “The Wizard of Earthsea”, the hero faces life-threatening events such as when he let loose the shadow which nearly killed him. He faces danger again when he chases the shadow and damages his boat. His challenge is to overcome his fear, confront the shadow and defeat it.

• Medieval influence came into the development of Fantasy through William Morris who “invented a storytelling language to match his imaginary worlds” (Attebery, 1980, p. 7) and C.S. Lewis who incorporated the psychology of Jung into his work (Attebery) (see above – archetypes).

Le Guin in “The Wizard of Earthsea” uses a special rhythm and language for her narrative which helps to create ‘the other’ world. Examples of this language include “No weapon-hurt had come to the boy” (he was not injured by the weapon. – p. 22); a healall (a physician/doctor/healer – p. 23); Sunreturn (morning – p. 27); drouth (drought – p. 57); and carven shelves (carved shelves – p. 145).

References

Attebery, B. (1980). Locating fantasy. In The fantasy tradition in American Literature: from Irving to Le Guinn (pp. 2-9). Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1980.

Cherry, K. (2010). Archetypes: Jung’s archetypes. Retrieved August 5, 2010, from http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/tp/archetypes.htm

Le Guin, U. (1993; 1968). A Wizard of Earthsea. In The Earthsea Quartet (pp. 13-167). London: Penguin.

Peterson, D. (2010). The archetypes of the hero’s journey. Retrieved August 5, 2010, from http://adulted.about.com/od/howtos/a/archetypes.htm

Tax, M. (Jan 28, 2002). Year of Harry Potter, Enter the Dragon. In The Nation.

Also: AUT: PowerPoint Slides Week 3 and Week 4 from Critical Reader, obtained from Blackboard.