Max Damerell: A Wizard of Earthsea (Novella) - How Does Ursula K. Le Guin depict race and gender in her novella ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’?

“’There is a saying on Gont, ‘Weak as woman’s magic’ and there is another saying ‘wicked as woman’s magic’” (Le Guin, 1968)

So writes Ursula K. Le Guin in the first chapter of her fantasy novel ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’. This sets the tone for her depiction of gender; male and female characters are written as uneven and unequal in their roles, especially when it comes to magical powers.  The boy Duny who is later renamed Ged is made aware of his own potential as a wizard by his aunt, the sister of his dead mother. She is described as “an ignorant woman among ignorant folk; she often used her crafts to foolish and dubious ends” (Le Guin, 1968).

            The aunt is never named and she is described in unflattering terms. Her black hair is tangled and uncombed. She lives alone and is feared by the village children. She teaches Duny, and guides him towards understanding his powers and then she doesn’t feature again.

            Duny, nickednamed Sparrowhawk by the other children, becomes Ged. Recognized as a gifted wizard he is sent to Roke, a school which aims to develop powerful but responsible magic in young men. His adventures lead him to the house of Ogion the Mage. Ogion is “lean and tough as a hound, tireless…His eyes and ears were very keen, and often there was a listening look on his face” (Le Guin, 1968). In Ogion’s house Ged meets a young girl, who is, he’s told, a half witch. Again she is never named; again she is unattractively described as “sallow” and “very ugly”.

It’s almost as if Le Guin doesn’t value her female characters enough to give them names. They are either ugly, sneaky little things or “slender and young” (Le Guin,1968) with long silky black hair, like the Lady of O. However, Ged says of her “she’s only a woman” (Le Guin, 1968) and she has no identity beyond being the wife of the Lord of O. Does Le Guin believe her female characters must always be subservient to men? Athena Andreadis believes so, writing: “They exist as props to make Ged’s life comfortable or pleasant” (Andreadis, n.d).

Here’s Le Guin writing about Yarrow: “She kept busy those two days making dry wheatcakes for the voyagers to carry, and wrapping up dried fish and meat”(Le Guin, 1968). The “voyagers” are young men setting out to right some wrongs. I just wish the author had credited her female characters with names and skills equal those she attributes to young men. What is surprising in all this is the author is a woman. Her females are either old and manipulative or very young and eager to please.

            Surprising too, is the depiction of race. Ged and his friends have red-brown skin, but evil characters and potential foes are shown to be true foreigners by their light skin. “The Earthsea books are profoundly radical because they lead one to think and feel outside of regular patterns” (Tax, 2002). The story of ‘The Wizard of Earthsea’ is strongly moral. The author depicts good versus evil using skin colour and race segregation to differentiate. The men from Osskil were “dour men, pale-skinned, with black drooping moustaches and lank hair” (Le Guin, 1968). They scowl, they jeer, and they are often cruel, harsh, slave masters. Here’s Le Guin writing about Skiorh, a man from Osskil:“It was an ugly face, pale, coarse and cruel”. (Le Guin, 1968)

            It’s a description and assessment she makes of many of the foreigners Ged encounters. Tax believes Le Guin seeks balance of power in her novels “where light and dark, life and death are yin and yang, intertwined rather than opposed” (Tax, 2002). I read ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ and while it “let wind into (my) imaginations” (Tax, 2002) it failed to set free those early doubts. Le Guin’s depiction of race and gender are uneven and unfair, and that is enormously surprising given her own gender and the time in which she was writing.

References:

·      Andreadis, A. (n.d.). As Weak as Women's Magic. Retrieved from http://crossedgenres.com/archives/028-superhero/as-weak-as-womens-magic-by-athena-andreadis/

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

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