At 03:55 PM 5/20/97 +0100, Berni Phillips wrote:
>...Le Guin came out with a fourth
>book, _Tehanu_, which is really not for children. _Tehanu_ is much
>darker than the first three and carries the hero and heroine of the
>first three books (Ged and Tenar) into middle age. Ged has lost his
>powers (this happened at the end of the third book) and Tenar is
>widowed, having married an ordinary man and rejected any power she might
>have had. The two of them try to live ordinary lives along with an
>abused child whom Tenar has rescued.
I have to disagree that _Tehanu_ is not for children. It may be a little more
gritty, but I think that it gives a good balance to the Earthsea series by
representing in some detail the life of the average woman in Earthsea. As
several people (including Le Guin) have pointed out, the first three books
were unquestioningly sexist (there are no woman mages, women are
portrayed as being incapable of learning anything more than weak love
spells or tapping into sinister natural forces, as in _Tombs of Atuan_).
I really like the entire series, but I am troubled by the sexism of
the first
three books and think that Tehanu, while being less cohesive and formal
in its style, provides an important counterbalance which children would
really benefit from experiencing.
--Janice
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:14 PDT