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lindong524 's review for:
Tehanu
by Ursula K. Le Guin
dark
emotional
reflective
Fourth book of the Earthsea Cycle.
I continue to fall more and more in love with the Earthsea Cycle. Tehanu took my breath away. The over-arching story is beautiful in its own right but, my god, it's the background “noise” that literally tore me apart.
Tehanu picks up immediately where The Farthest Shore left off. With Ged's power drained and Arren now the new reigning king of Havnor, who does indeed bring peace as promised. While, technically, the main arc is Therru's origin story, Tehanu and Ged's mid-life tale is far more intriguing.
Tehanu is now left with an empty nest as her daughter has married, her son off onto his adventures, and her husband dead. The story is first driven by Ogion's death, charging Tehanu to travel with Therru to Ogion's hut, but the real story is how Tehanu experiences the world as a widowed women and perceived "ordinary woman". The fear that plagues her as a woman without the guardianship of a man, simply strolling down a country road and encountering a party of men is enough to send shivers down her body. That her merit lies not in her sheer existence, but because she is Lady Tenar of the Ring gives her a refreshing lens to the world: she knows what it means to be treated as an "ordinary woman" and what it means to be treated as a peer by men. They are not the same.
In her youth, she had also carried the hubris of men, empowered by her closeness to power but not because, according to the society of men, she had any herself. Other women as well kept her as a distance, not sure where she falls. She could never truly become a wizard or a woman as Ogion's ward; it was mutually exclusive and if she belonged to neither, she would belong nowhere. So she brought herself down, stooping to the levels required of her to become a woman and she cared for her household dutifully. I wonder how she felt all those years. I wonder how I will feel all those years.
I loved the relationship that transpired between Moss and Tehanu. I love the effort Tehanu later made to repair her relationship with Ivy. The women of an older generation that we, when young, look down on and scoff at, thinking they never knew any better and that we are better, that we will be different. In our youth and in our innocence, perhaps we are also set by the patriarchy against our own sex. But they fought in their own ways and resisted. They are wise and have learned to see the difference but also reconcile it - "Ours is only a little power, seems like, next to theirs...but it goes down deep." If we are not too busy fighting the older generation of women, perhaps we could learn more.
The last part with Spark haunted me. I too fear that I will fail my son and my sex in that way. To have raised him with all the flaws of his father, who bears the flaws of his father before him. But I don't even know how to fight it. It is an invisible war waged by not just the people in our lives also those we don't know, those who are long dead. It is an invisible war waged by books, TV, languages, industries, products, services...everything. How do you fight that war and emerge victorious? How do you not fail the women that are to come after you? The thought alone plunges me into a deep dark fear. Could I still love my son then? Would motherhood and womanhood be difficult to reconcile then?
Ged's story is an entirely different one. For his entire life, he's been marked but his gift of magic, his powers. Now it has been poured out from him like water from a cup to fend off Cob's evil. Now he grapples with being common, ordinary, average. That is the struggle we all go through at a certain point in life though, isn't it? The awakening to our plainness. We are a generation tricked into believing that we are extraordinary because of our talents and our powers, but that was never true. We are extraordinary simply because we are. But we have believed that lie and believe we must pursue extraordinary lives with our extraordinary talents. Imagine the trauma that ensues when you realize that average constitutes broadly 90% of the population and that you are not going to be the one in ten.
Of course, Ged's story isn't quite that simple because he had true powers. His story is more of a middle aged man who has peaked in his career and now dismissed with a mild reverence, if not indifference. He has given himself to his institution and pursued great things, but at the end of the day, he must face himself still. And so he did...of course he did that as Tehanu and Therru struggled with just merely feeling and being safe in the world but, what can I say, men and women experience the world very differently. I like Ged, but still, the reality is that men are afforded luxuries that women evidently are not. That Le Guin can wrap that story into another exquisitely beautiful epic fantasy is a testimony to her brilliance as a writer and her keen observations of the workings of the world.
I will always have a bias for stories with female protagonists who are written by women. They resonate with me in ways that other stories simply cannot. I cried for Circe and I cried for Tehanu and I think I will likely cry for Therru later too.
I continue to fall more and more in love with the Earthsea Cycle. Tehanu took my breath away. The over-arching story is beautiful in its own right but, my god, it's the background “noise” that literally tore me apart.
Tehanu is now left with an empty nest as her daughter has married, her son off onto his adventures, and her husband dead. The story is first driven by Ogion's death, charging Tehanu to travel with Therru to Ogion's hut,
In her youth, she had also carried the hubris of men, empowered by her closeness to power but not because, according to the society of men, she had any herself. Other women as well kept her as a distance, not sure where she falls. She could never truly become a wizard or a woman as Ogion's ward; it was mutually exclusive and if she belonged to neither, she would belong nowhere. So she brought herself down, stooping to the levels required of her to become a woman and she cared for her household dutifully. I wonder how she felt all those years. I wonder how I will feel all those years.
I loved the relationship that transpired between Moss and Tehanu. I love the effort Tehanu later made to repair her relationship with Ivy. The women of an older generation that we, when young, look down on and scoff at, thinking they never knew any better and that we are better, that we will be different. In our youth and in our innocence, perhaps we are also set by the patriarchy against our own sex. But they fought in their own ways and resisted. They are wise and have learned to see the difference but also reconcile it - "Ours is only a little power, seems like, next to theirs...but it goes down deep." If we are not too busy fighting the older generation of women, perhaps we could learn more.
The last part with Spark haunted me. I too fear that I will fail my son and my sex in that way. To have raised him with all the flaws of his father, who bears the flaws of his father before him. But I don't even know how to fight it. It is an invisible war waged by not just the people in our lives also those we don't know, those who are long dead. It is an invisible war waged by books, TV, languages, industries, products, services...everything. How do you fight that war and emerge victorious? How do you not fail the women that are to come after you? The thought alone plunges me into a deep dark fear. Could I still love my son then? Would motherhood and womanhood be difficult to reconcile then?
Of course, Ged's story isn't quite that simple because he had true powers. His story is more of a middle aged man who has peaked in his career and now dismissed with a mild reverence, if not indifference. He has given himself to his institution and pursued great things, but at the end of the day, he must face himself still. And so he did...of course he did that as Tehanu and Therru struggled with just merely feeling and being safe in the world but, what can I say, men and women experience the world very differently. I like Ged, but still, the reality is that men are afforded luxuries that women evidently are not. That Le Guin can wrap that story into another exquisitely beautiful epic fantasy is a testimony to her brilliance as a writer and her keen observations of the workings of the world.
I will always have a bias for stories with female protagonists who are written by women. They resonate with me in ways that other stories simply cannot. I cried for Circe and I cried for Tehanu and I think I will likely cry for Therru later too.