To the alien race of Gethen in Ursula Le Guin’s speculative novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, gender is not so much a construct as it is an absence. Gethenians ignore it save for during a fraction of their monthly sexual cycle, and as such, figures into their lives as a mere footnote rather than a guiding force. This concept of gender’s absence is not unnoticed by the reader, though, because it is instead brought to the forefront through the eyes of a human emissary named Genly Ai. Sent to the planet to understand more about its people and to invite it into a multi-planet alliance, Genly only achieves full success in the latter. His shortcomings in the former objective are largely due to his inability to unlearn the social constructs he harbors, …show more content…
One evening, he stumbles over Estraven’s questions about the difference between the male and female sex on Genly’s home planet, replying remarkably, “In a sense, women are more alien to me than you are” (Le Guin 234). This authority on gender, this man who has spent much of his commentary on how certain actions give an impression of femininity while others are inherently masculine, cannot clearly define the women he has lived among for years on end to an alien he has known for a much shorter span of time. He is uncertain as to the definition of one gender versus another, and yet he has stubbornly labeled actions and appearances according to his gender …show more content…
While he begins the novel, he is an alien among aliens, isolated and forced to apply his previous knowledge of gender to interpret the actions of the Gethenians. This practice does not reflect kindly on Gethenian behaviors, deeming anything under a feminine label unfavorable, but it provides a base from which Genly could (and eventually does not) leap to understanding from. At each chance offered to the emissary to adjust and recognize the cultural differences between himself and the Gethenian people, he repeatedly uses his gender binary as a crutch in making his way to understanding; relying so heavily on this crutch prevents him from fully opening up to the idea of an absence of gender, an affliction that dogs him to the end. Genly tries to understand, believes he understands, but undoes himself at every narrative turn, ruled by gender each time. Absence of gender ultimately escapes his
Margaret Atwood is famous for many things. She is a poet, novelist, story writer, essayist, and an environmental activist. Her books are usually bestsellers and have received high praises in the United States, Europe, and her native country, Canada. She has also received many Literary awards, like the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the two Governor General’s Awards (“Margaret Atwood” Poetry). Through her books, she has written about what she sees in society towards women. She discusses how gender equality was corrupted in the past, but still is far from being reached, and women’s roles in society (“Spotty-handed”). Atwood also takes events in her life; like the Great Depression, Communism, and World War II; and applies it to her works. Margaret Atwood's works, including her novel The Handmaid's Tale, reflects women’s fight in equality, how society determines
1 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985) 217.
Enter into any café on the UCSC campus for a prolonged period of time and you are likely to hear the words “gender is a social construct”. Initially you’ll think to yourself, “what a load of granola” this is an expected reaction because for most people the concept of “gender” is natural. Its not until you are able to see how the idea of gender is constructed from physiological differences between males and females as discussed by researcher Miller AE and his team of scientists. Or how men possess great privilege because of gender roles, and women are seen as objects, that you will truly be able to understand that gender is nothing but a social contract. Authors Gloria Anzaldúa, Marjane Satrapi, and Virginia Woolf discuss in their novels Borderlands,
As noted by a previous visitor of Winter, “There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive.” (93). There is no stigma related to crying, especially a masculine figure doing so, even though Ai hides himself several times to do so. The absence of war is the most notable. Although there is still conflict and murder, which is within human nature to disagree and fight, Le Guin’s writing suggests that war is a masculine concept. Masculinity and its effects on war has been a widely debated feminist ideal, most famously explored in Carol Cohn’s Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense
The Left Hand of Darkness was a novel I expected to be very different than what it was. As I interpreted it, the novum of the story was a thought experiment of an androgynous society. Furthermore, I think what Le Guin was saying by choosing this particular novum is best explained in the Cambridge Companion in which it states, “Le Guin confronts the question of socialised versus biological difference...in this society, ‘humanity’ is defined as a commonly accessible and shared set of values, attributes and behaviors tangibly separated from arbitrary and shifting notions of the self-based only on a sex embodiment” (247). Le Guin wanted to challenge not only how gender is perceived/developed socially but also the biological roles that play into defining gender. Based off this, I was truly looking forward to learning how this society acted, governed itself, and was overall different than the society we live in today.
Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is the author’s most celebrated work. The book conveys the story of Marlow, who is a sailor on the ship. Marlow narrates the story describing particularly what he came across during his journey and experienced. When we look at the events that take place in the book, it is unquestionable that Women do not occupy a significant portion of the story; the story is predominately male dominated. However, does women’s lack of appearance make them minor characters? Or do women have a minor effect in the story? Having analyzed the book under the scope of “Feminist View”, we can answer these questions and say that women play considerable roles even though they occupy a small portion in the story. In my essay I will
The gender binary of Western culture dichotomizes disgendered females and males, categorizing women and men as opposing beings and excluding all other people. Former professor of Gender Studies Walter Lee Williams argues that gender binarism “ignores the great diversity of human existence,” (191) and is “an artifact of our society’s rigid sex-roles” (197). This social structure has proved detrimental to a plethora of people who fall outside the Western gender dichotomy. And while this gender-exclusive system is an unyielding element of present day North American culture, it only came to be upon European arrival to the Americas. As explained by Judith Lorber in her essay “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”, “gender is so pervasive in our society we assume it is bred into our genes” (356). Lorber goes on to explain that gender, like culture, is a human production that requires constant participation (358).
For Carolyn G. Heilbrun, androgyny is a “metaphor for gender liberation” and “a physical fact of life that highlights the performative nature of gender identity and symbolizes sexual emancipation” (Van Leeuwen, 2006). Le Guin in her essay also questioned “Is Gender Necessary?” Gender is built around certain cultural notions or “proper” behaviour and social contracts. It is a cultural product, a set of ideas that are appropriated by individuals through cultural “training” reinforced by media, political structures, fashion industry, which define what it should look like to be masculine or feminine. The Left Hand of Darkness is set on Gethen, where the residents are sexless for the three quarters of each month. However depending on the circumstance, they can be sexually active for a short period of time every month when they can turn either male or female. The sexual state is called Kemmer while their normal state is Somer. When a partner who is also in the state of Kemmer is found, they synchronise arbitrarily by one becoming male and the other female. Le Guin appears to challenge this gender norm of society based on biological determinism and try to deconstruct the conventional idea of femininity and masculinity to see what hides beneath them. As mentioned previously, for Gethenians, there is no absolute
The construction of gender is based on the division of humanity to man and woman. This is impossible ontologically speaking; because the humans are not divided, thus gender is merely an imaginary realm. It only exist in the language exercises, and the way that cultural products are conceived in them. This essay is a preliminary attempt to offer an analysis of ‘One Is Not Born a Woman’ by Wittig and ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone De Beauvoir holds on the language usage contribution to the creation of genders and the imagined femininity.
perspective on the concept, arguing that gender is a cultural performance. Her careful reading of
There is a palpable existence of cultural and ideological disconnect woven throughout Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Such disengagements are generated by a distortion of our own perceived conventions of sex and gender through the perspective of the main character, Genly Ai. Le Guin employs Ai and his own assumptions of sociocultural and gender norms as a reference point for what occupies the established and biological conducts of Gethenian life, yet he finds their mindset difficult to navigate. These disassociations are supported in the conjectures of the following theorists: Judith Butler, Joseph Culler, Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman, and Steven Seidman.
My first reaction to Egalia’s Daughters, by Gerd Brantenberg, was something like "WHAT is this". I was immediately very confused, and had no idea what this author was writing about. In fact, I felt as though I opened the book to the middle of a story, and became turned off by the whole experience. It took about three chapters, and someone’s help, until I started to read the book understandably, with ease, and began to enjoy the world I was entering. It became very apparent that I would have to detach myself from all that I thought I knew about gender, and simply allow myself to take in the message Brantenberg was trying to convey. As soon as I began to understand what I was reading, I found myself thoroughly engaged by both the story and the sociological aspects of both the Egalian, and my societies social constructions of gender. Although I was aware, to some degree of the socialization of gender in our society, having not taken any feminist or women’s studies courses, I was not familiar with how much gender is ingrained in our culture, language, government, identities, etc. This book truly brings forth those ideals by expressing the opposite of what we know in our society to be true concerning the socialization of gender.
Gender appears as a social construct that comes with fixed roles, as seen more prominently through Gilman’s character Mollie’s thoughts and experiences as a woman. Mainly through Mollie, Gilman ultimately identifies the challenges of not accepting assigned gender roles, as well as the gendered power structure that society is built
As Lorber explores in her essay “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender, “most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Lorber 1). This article was very intriguing because I thought of my gender as my sex but they are not the same. Lorber has tried to prove that gender has a different meaning that what is usually perceived of through ordinary connotation. Gender is the “role” we are given, or the role we give to ourselves. Throughout the article it is obvious that we are to act appropriately according to the norms and society has power over us to make us conform. As a member of a gender an individual is pushed to conform to social expectations of his/her group.
In the 1900s novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the protagonist often encounters women at landmarks of his life. Charlie Marlow is a sailor and imperialist who sets out along the Congo River to “civilize” the “savages.” The novella begins with a crew on the Thames waiting for the tides to change. During their wait, a character named Marlow tells of his exploits on the African continent. In his recounted travels, Marlow meets other imperialists such as Mr. Kurtz, a man who is obsessed with the pursuit of ivory and riches. Like Mr. Kurtz, Marlow embarks across the African continent in hopes of earning both money and respect. One early critic of the novel, Edward Garnett, wrote in his review that “[Heart of Darkness] is simply a piece of art…the artist is intent on presenting his sensations in that sequence and arrangements whereby the meaning or meaninglessness of the white man in uncivilized Africa can be felt in its really significant aspects,” (Garnett). What Garnett fails to observe is that Heart of Darkness is not only an observation of “the white man,” but the white woman as well.