The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin was written in 1969 and is one of the finest examples of feminist science fiction writings. The events in the book take place in the imaginary universe of Hainish. The main character – Genly Ai – is a representative of the galactic federation of worlds; he strives to introduce the world of Gethen into that galactic community. The book describes Genly’s enchanting journey in the pursuit to fulfill his aspiration.
One of the main themes in the book is the fantasy about genderless society, where genders are not labeled with specific roles that they have to perform, and everybody can choose which gender they want to be for several days out of a month (Attebery, 1980). The emotions and feelings, however, such as love, jealousy, hate, aggression, etc. of the peculiar to other worlds still exist.
The implications of the genderless society put forward by Ursula Le Guin are quite interesting: she claims that without gender, gender-specific roles, and stereotypical behavior, the world would not experience any wars whatsoever. The Gethenians – inhabitants of the gender-neutral society – possess no notion of nationalism, or superiority over other nations (Cadden, 2004).
They do, however, establish a certain image of hostility towards neighbors, but at the same time, there is no serious intention to conquer or attack anyone. Nations exist within this world, and so do the differences between representatives of different nations, but the geographical separation is vague (Roberts, 2000).
The only type of conflict developing the Gethenian society is the type of conflict experienced mainly by homogenous groups: they compete for the position in the society, or prestige that they call shifgrethor. The rivalry for shifgrethor is subtle and is not expressed, and representatives of different camps move easily from one to another.
Like many other pieces of science fiction The Left Hand of Darkness explores the unknown world of future of technological process. In the book, Gethenians are not simply androgynes due to the natural evolution. They are androgynies due to the scientific
experiments performed long ago in order to create people who could survive in the harsh realm of glaciers of their country (Roberts, 2000). Thus, gender neutrality is also a way of survival and preserving the nation since any Gethenian can be both male and female depending on the previous agreement with the partner they are interested in.
On the overall, the book provides interesting insights into a feminist perspective of what the world can be without people playing roles imposed on them by the gender. It discusses implications of genderless society, where no one is required to fit into society definition of male or female gender, where almost everyone has been both a mother and a father bearing equal responsibilities for childbirth and child care. The book is spectacularly successful in not only drawing the picture of a genderless world, but also in transforming and changing the reader’s thought and stereotypical understanding of gender.
References
Attebery, Brian. The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1980.
Cadden, Mike. Ursula K. le Guin beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Roberts, Adam. Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 2000.