Analysis Of Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand Of Darkness

Ursula Le Guin’s novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, is set on a planet called Gethen where the inhabitants are androgynous, or in somer, until a period of time during the month where they become either male or female, or in kemmer. At this time, only one can become male and the other female and if one gets pregnant they remain female until they give birth. Because of this, Gethen is a world where gender has been removed or distributed so that it is no longer limited to some individuals and not others. Nevertheless, Joanna Russ argues that Gethen is just a “world of men” because the emphasis on politics, the lack of attention to family life, and the use of male pronouns for all characters. She claims that this reinforces our own gender norms and undermines our experiencing a “genderless” world.

While Russ is correct that Le Guin mainly uses the pronoun “he” and makes use of primarily stereotypical “male” activities this criticism misses the fact that The Left Hand of Darkness should be read with a focus on how gender is on Earth and what it constitutes within our society by comparing it to the concept of gender on Gethen. Le Guin wants us to examine what gender means as a standard and what purpose it serves in our lives. By looking through Genly Ai’s perspective we are able to

She has us see someone with the same mindset as us, in regards to gender, enter an androgynous world and interact with the inhabitants to establish relationships. We share his reactions and can realize how much gender dictates within our society and restricts our views to understand other’s interpretations. Social norms have been shaped by the way we perceive gender in a way we’ve become blind to the issues it creates. We’ve become desensitized to the serious issues that gender has affected like gender roles, job inequality, politics, and much