On Fri, 30 May 1997, Anne V Stuecker wrote:
> >In the later books (those that I have read, far
> >from all) she is completely reduced to a generic mom character who
> gives
> >out hugs and brownies. Calvin, on the other hand, gets to stay somewhat
> >interesting. The message seems to me to be that it's okay to be a
> >nerdy girl, but you damn well better conform when you grow up.
>
> Either that's the message, or it is that the only choice for women when
> they reach adulthood is to be this sort of generic mom, regardless of how
> nerdy/intellectual/unfeminine they were in their reckless youth. I guess
> this means that until adulthood soon-to-be-women are "allowed" to behave
> in a less-than-feminine way, but once they become sexually active adults
> they must conform to a traditional role.
Hmm. While the "romance" certainly seems to fall from Meg in the
remaining books, especially with her cookie-cutter family life, I seem to
remember allusions to the fact that she had another life outside of that
family life. The thing is that we only see her from the perspective of
her family who only see her in her role in their family. I get the
feeling that in a way, the remaining stories could be seen as a comment on
the way life hides the exciting parts of our mothers' lives from us. In
that case It would be nice if there was a book dealing with meg more
directly in her older life. There might be, but I haven't read it.
On the other hand, LeGuin does seem to take hetero-sexual love,
marraige, and parenthood as the be-all and end-all of human existance. It
seems like that is the climax and resolution of all of her stories. Much
of the conflict is dealing with not having that. Once that conflict is
resolved, there isn't anything to write about.
Of course I haven't read nearly all of her books either and am making
wild leaps of conjecture, but somewhere in there those were the feelings I
got.
-- Joel VanLaven
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