A review by brnineworms
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

adventurous hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

3.5

“Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?”

The Left Hand of Darkness is difficult to evaluate. I have to remember that the book came out in the 1960s; I can appreciate that it must have been groundbreaking in its own time while acknowledging that it seems quite limited by today’s standards.

Le Guin takes the premise of gender politics and pulls from it the central question of this book: what would politics look like in a world without gender? But her exploration of this idea is constrained by her own biases, namely misogynist, misandrist, bioessentialist, and cisnormative assumptions. Some of these biases may be Genly’s rather than Le Guin’s; if so, I don’t think enough was done to interrogate and deconstruct such notions as men being defined by conquest and women being either sweet or shrill – they’re taken for granted. Genly did slowly learn to accept Estraven for who he is instead of trying to categorise him as male or female, despite initially struggling to understand Gethenian “ambisexuality.” That’s something. I just wish Le Guin had gone further in using this opportunity to really dig into gender as a social construct and the associated social roles and stereotypes. It also would have been nice to see her use neo(/xeno?)pronouns, or even singular they, rather than defaulting to he/him. Honestly, the argument that masculine pronouns are actually more gender neutral than gender neutral pronouns because we use them to refer to God was ?? ludicrous. Divine Cisness crops up again in Genly’s genetic experiment theory, which positions cis people as both normal and godlike. You can’t just throw that in without examination. Am I meant to assume he’s right or is this just Genly’s ego on display? Maybe it’s a meta reference to the Gethenians being a thought experiment? I’m not sure what I’m meant to take from this. I don’t think it was meant to be so thought-provoking, at least not in this way.

I also have to note the queerness that emerges from this insistence on masculine gendering.

I’m not sure I’d call Genly and Estraven’s relationship homoerotic since it’s surprisingly chaste. There are some cute moments between them. But sometimes it did feel as though Le Guin made her Gethenians quasi-gay just so she could bury them. So many of their relationships end in death and tragedy.

Apart from the gender philosophy, the setting stands out as well; a stark, hostile environment dominated by ice and snow. Bleak. Le Guin’s prose is as evocative as usual, though the facts and figures do spoil her descriptions somewhat (seriously, I don’t need to know the exact temperature in Fahrenheit – tell me about icicles or whatever).

The Cold War parallels are obvious in the tensions between Karhide and Orgoreyn (representing the USA and the USSR respectively). I suppose they also tie in with the Taoist dualism recurrent throughout the book; two sides of one coin. I can see a lot of thought went into their cultures, particularly the ways in which they spoke,

with one being perhaps overly mindful of pride and honour while the other seems direct but is actually adept at subterfuge.

Tibe should have played a bigger role and should have had more screen time (page time?)

A seminal work, no doubt, but did I like it? I feel like I’d enjoy this book more on a second reading, knowing which characters are important and being assured that everything comes together in the end. I can see myself giving it four stars in that case. As it stands, I’m not sure I can rate it that highly, but I certainly can’t give it a low rating. I’m glad I read it, and my opinion does generally skew positive. That this book exists is a feat in itself, even if it does have its flaws.

CONTENT WARNINGS: descriptions of sexuality and sexual anatomy but no sexually explicit scenes, sexism, homophobia, suicide, death, murder, violence, (impending) war, human trafficking, imprisonment, prison labour, forced sterilisation, drugging, mentions of rape, and incest