[book] the left hand of darkness (is light)

[hwarium]

Hello, the goat of le Guin's crop. My expectations lead me to disappointment but when I reread it to collate notes - I was stunned by something unexpected.

Quickly, this book is about a human envoy (Genly) sent to a wintery planet inhabited by variant-humans. Gethenians are gender neutral but will randomly become male or female once a month during 'kemmer', their sexual cycle. Gender does not exist on this planet!!

The no context vibe check: omegaverse Lord of the Rings meet March of the Penguins.

(MOVING ON) (4.4k)

Historically, this book is about gender. To me, the book was not about gender. Gender was the least interesting thing about the book! The ambisexual society was cool but not convincing and I'm ready to acknowledge that this is because I'm reading it 50 years later with the benefit of binging A/B/O fanfiction. I can sympathise the worldbuilding would have been mind-blowing in the 1960s:

Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everyone has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else.

— Chapter 7: The Question of Sex

who should read this

Don't do what I did and come into this expecting Ted Chiang-style anthro-fiction and first contact narrative. Think Stanislaw Lem instead, philosophical fable told through worldbuilding. Read this if you like Solaris, Never Let Me Go, Ancillary Justice, From the New World (anime). If you like Murakami or Winged Histories' style of piece-together-story where you draw dots and create meaning, you'll have so much room here. If your favourite song on Red is State of Grace - have a go.

banger lines

I felt the old habit of our love as if it had been broken yesterday, and knew the faithfulness in him that had sent him to share my ruin. And feeling that unavailing bond close on me anew, I was angry; for Ashe's love had always forced me to act against my heart.

— Chapter 6: One Way into Orgoreyn

(hgnn, the paradox of being uncontrollably in love. Being angry that you feel things. Acknowledging that you have feelings but hating that you have them because they against what you want).

’I thought myself an exile.'
'You for my sake - I for yours'

— Chapter 16: Between Drumner and Dremegole

(I loved the circularity and parallelisms in this book. People being reflections of each other (and reflections of the past—). The beautiful pain of being outcasts together. CINEMATIC PARALLELS BETWEEN ESTRAVEN SAVING GENLY FROM THE COLD AND SECRET HISTORIES HENRY SAVING RICHARD.)

[Estraven] 'My greatest error was, as you say, in not making myself clear to you. I am not used to doing so. I am not used to giving, or accepting, either advice or blame.'
'I don't mean to be unjust, Estraven—'
'Yet you are. It is strange. I am the only man in all Gethen that has trusted you entirely, and I am the only man in Gethen that you have refused to trust.'
He put his head in his heads. He said at last, 'I'm sorry, Estraven'. It was both apology and admission.
'The fact is,' I said, 'That you're unable, or unwilling, to believe in the fact that I believe in you.'

— Chapter 14: The Escape

(The multiple scenes where Estraven and Genly think they get each other only to get stabbed because they don't, THEY DON'T!! And when they become friends they soften and become comfortable only to realise they still don't get each other and now the stabby-stabby hurts even more)

When you meet a Gethenian you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does, which is to cast him in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards him a corresponding role... They cannot play the game. They do not see each other as men or women.

— Chapter 7: The Question of Sex

(Chapter 7 is in the style of an anthropologist's report and it is crazy bonkers how much possibility is condensed here. Also super interesting that the POV is female because you can hold it against Genly and go — ??? bro why was a misogynist chosen to be the Envoy?)

Summarising:

• Sexually, society is equal. Everyone goes through kemmer once a month (it's literally heat cycles). They can't control being male or female so everyone risks pregnancy and child-rearing.
• So there's no division of humanity into dualities (strong/weak, protective/protected, owner/chattel).
• But they don't and can't have sex any other time, so it's a cycle of sexual frustration and release. Ch 7 compares them to adolescents (c.f. adults) because they aren't celibate, just latent. Because of the way kemmer works, unconsenting sex is impossible. The chapter POV theorises that maybe this is the reason there's no war on Gethen. There's no masculine drive to rape (war = domination = rape).
• *Personally not sure about this. This might be a false assumption by a biased narrator (which le Guin dabbles in). Still rereading and thinking through choice in the kemmer process.
• But social inequality still exists, judged against morality (and usefulness, in Orgota)

Finally he asked, had he offended me? I explained my silence, with some embarrassment. I was afraid he would laugh at me. After all he is no more an oddity, a sexual freak, than I am: up here on the Ice each of us is singular, isolate, I as cut off from those like me, from my society and its rules, as he from his. There is no world full of other Gethenians here to explain and support my existence. We are equals at last, equal, alien, alone.'

— Chapter 16: Between Drumner and Dremegole

(The solitary journey through the ice is so much. To bypass differences when you are alone. To see someone for who they are when there is no society to fit them in. To calibrate your manners to one person and not the worlds they come from. HOW THEY ARE ONLY EQUAL WHEN ALONE.)

Light is the left hand of darkness,
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.

(me, sobbing through my fist, TITLE IS LITERALLY LIGHT)

mmm Estraven understands patriotism

’I forgot what a king is, forgot that the king in his own eyes is Karhide, forgot what patriotism is and that he is, of necessity, the perfect patriot. Let me ask you this, Mr. Ai: do you know, by your own experience, what patriotism is?'
'No,' I said, shaken by the force of that intense personality suddenly turning itself wholly on me. 'I don't think I do. If my patriotism you don't mean the love of one's homeland, for that I do know.'
'No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year. We've followed our road too far. And you, who come from a world that outgrew nations centuries ago, who hardly know what I'm talking about, who show us the new road — ' He broke off. After a while he went on, in control again, cool and polite: 'its because of fear that I refuse to urge your cause with the king, now. But not fear for myself, Mr. Ai. I'm not acting patriotically. There are, after all, other nations on Gethen."

'Fear you?' said the king, turning his shadow-scarred face, grinning, speaking loud and high. 'But I do fear you, Envoy. I fear those who sent you... There's nothing between the stars but void and terror and darkness but you come out of that all alone trying to frighten me. But I am already afraid, and I am the king. Fear is king!'

(half a book later)

[Estraven] 'Hate Orgoreyn? No, how should I? How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain ploughland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. It is simply self-love.'

+

[Genly on Estraven] 'He served his country very dearly, sir, but he did not serve it, or you. He served the master I serve.'
'The Ekumen?' said Argaven, startled.
'No. Mankind.'

(Weeping. He gets it!! There is no love in patriotism, only selfishness and fear of the other. Seeing this trickled throughout the book was an exclamation mark moment for me — because I struggle to say I love China. I'm not patriotic, I don't have feelings towards governments or politicians, and I'm aware of the current sentiment to know that any declaration of love will be ill-received. But thinking about China fills me with so much memory, admiration, and love that I want to share it. )

this book is not about gender

The Left Hand of Darkness is so famous for being the gender book.

But I think only the setting is about gender.

The book is about two people trying to understand each other and failing because one of them is unconsciously and unapologicaly misogynistic. This is not resolved by the end of the book! Genry learns to see Estraven as a person beyond his gender, he never sees Estraven as genderless - he says he does in Ch 18 but I don't believe him! Men are liars!! When Genly's ship arrives on Winter, seeing men and women again disgusted him. Even at the very end when he met a Gethenian 'boy', he thought "he had a girl's quick delicacy in his looks and movements, but no girl could keep so grim a silence as he did.". Excuse me Mr Ai!! Estraven didn't go through all that shit so that you can keep gendering his people!! His [redacted]!!!

It’s not just that Genly Ai is incapable of seeing Estraven as both man and woman—it’s that any hint of femaleness revolts him, especially in people who are supposed to be powerful. Genly can’t respect anyone whom he sees as having female qualities, and thus he recoils from Estraven, the one person who tries to be honest with him.

— Paris Review: the Left Hand of Darkness at Fifty

(Will never forget Chapter 1 Genly getting mad because he didn't understand what Estraven was saying ("damning his effeminate deviousness"). Sir you are just dumb!)

The anthropological report in Chapter 7 is the extent of gender discourse, Madam le Guin... why do you give me crumbs... I'm on my knees begging for the lived experience and you just give me a scientist's summary. There are so many juicy bits along the way: the Foretellers, Clan-Hearths and Domains, 'a man must cast his own shadow', vowing kemmering (≈ monogamy), dothe and dothe-strength, the myths and fables, the concept of shifgrethor and nusuth.

*ongoing brain homework to understand this. The book says shifgrethor = "prestige, face, place, the pride-relationship, the untranslatable and all-important principle of social authority in Karhide and all civilizations of Gethen”. People online have linked it to the Greek ἀρετή (arete) or the Chinese 仁 (rén), virtue, humanity, benevolence. To me, it's more familiar with the Japanese 義理 (giri, and 恥 haji/shame) and the German de ehre. It's like an idea of honour, not in a lofty moral way, but as a duty to your place in the world and your circle of relationships. Like a humble, grounded version of honour. Le Guin leaned towards Taoism and Buddhism so I will read in that direction.

The Gethenian concept of shifgrethor, too, feels huge and difficult to understand, even after we get an explanation. It’s got elements of status, or prestige, but it’s more than that, and our best hints about it come from some of those fables that are sprinkled throughout the text, including the story of Getheren of Shath. This, along with other linguistic concepts like the untranslatable nusuth, feels like a nod to the famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language shapes the way we think.

— Paris Review

I loved the book but it still disappointed me because there were details about Gethen that raised my expectations and those weren't met. (Not a criticism I am easily disappointed and disappointment rarely affects enjoyment) The miscommunication between Genly and Estraven didn't feel like it stemmed from their gender worldviews. Prejudice yes, but a prejudice that was not linked to gender. I was so curious about Gethen society — what does childhood look like? What about first kemmers? What do jobs look like if there's no gender pay gap and mandatory sex leave? What about family in the absence of nuclear stereotypes? Is there filial piety? Like how does public policy shift if there is no average family of a husband + wife + two kids? Ma'am you mentioned there are hormone derivatives for preferred sexuality. Is there an aversion to childbearing? Or do Gethenians covet having 'flesh born' children? Also there's theoretically no patriarchy !!

I was soo sad that much of the book was spent following Genly and Estraven along the Gobrin Ice. I get it as a narrative device but please, bring me back to the world ;____; Show me how ambisexuality affects the way they think.

(The closest I got to bliss was Chapter 16 when they have a conversation about how humanity is dualist (yin and yang, two halves of a whole etc), with Genly assuming Gethenians are complete already — only for Estraven to say "We are dualists too. Duality is an essential isn't it? So long as there is myself and the other".)

(Le Guin also quickly mentions that Gethen has an oral tradition. That's it! Where are the bards and the Iliads and the theatres? The mental shifts when of the mind? I've been spoiled by Ted Chiang's the truth of fact, the truth of feeling so I wanted to go down that rabbit-hole of subjective truth-telling.)

(Maybe we are post-gender in 2021. I do doubt if all women in 1969 acted the same way and if le Guin leaned into stereotypes a la Men are from Mars Women are from Venus. 1960s had Sylvia Plath!! Narnia was 1950s! Little Women was 1868!)

Lastly, I was sooo looking forward to the sex scene, or at least Estraven's explicit kemmer. I wanted Genly to be confronted with the female form. To see that a person he had grown to respect is now female. For him to overcome his misogyny. Or even to challenge the heterosexuality/reproductivity of kemmer. Like Genly has an epiphany in Chapter 18 when Estraven is in kemmer and says: "And then I saw again... that he was a woman as well as a man". But right after Estraven says "I must not touch you" and THEN GENLY GOES:

For it seemed to me, and I think to him, that it was from that sexual tension between us, admitted now and understood, but not assuaged, that the great and sudden assurance of friendship between us rose... But it was from the difference between us, not from the affinities and likenesses... For us to meet sexually would be for us to meet once more as aliens.

(you COWARD. Absolutely sounds like a cis boy saying "oh I didn't like you anyway" after getting rejected.)

ANYWAY. This was for the best because I had another epiphany after finishing the book.

the myth of the exiled brother

Consider: A child has no psycho-sexual relationship to his mother and father. There is no myth of Oedipus on Winter.

— Chapter 7: The Question of Sex

!!!!!

But there is the myth of Gethen on Winter!!!!

Let me backtrack. Intense spoilers ahead.

~

Sometime in the middle of the book Estraven starts mentioning his brother and I'm like, okay? He's clearly important to you but plot relevant how? And then when they try mindspeaking, Estraven hears Genly talking in his brother's voice. AND THEN ESTRAVEN DIES AND SAYS HIS BROTHERS NAME.

He was dying when I got to him, sprawled and twisted away from his skis that stuck up out of the snow, his chest half shot away. I took his head in my arms and spoke to him, but he never answered me; only in a way he answered my love for him, crying out through the silent wreck and tumult of his mind as consciousness lapsed, in the unspoken tongue, once, clearly, 'Arek!'

AND THEN GENLY VISITS ESTRAVEN'S CLAN HEARTH AND MEETS HIS FATHER AND

The old lord looked at the boy, then at me.
'This is Sorve Harth,' heir of Estre, my sons' son.

'MY SONS (PLURAL) (APOSTROPHE) SON.

I'm currently screaming but when I first read this I was just like, okay? Funky but sure. A few brothers kemmer in Gethen. Found it cool it was a parallel of the fable mentioned earlier, Genly meeting Estraven's son, just like the Kardish tale of Stokven and Estraven (the ancestor). (Tangent time)

Stok and Estre were enemy domains (but Stokven and Estraven fell in love anyway). They went into kemmer but in the morning men from Stok arrived and!! KILLED ESTRAVEN HEIR OF ESTRE! IN FRNT OF STOKVEN!! ;____;

Stokven had a child and sent him to be the new heir... only meeting again years later.

(very subtle of Le Guin insert a tradition where every generation has the same name)

He said, "I am Arek of Estre."

The other said, "I am Therem of Stok."

Then Estraven laughed, for he was still weak, and said, "Did you warm me back to life in order to kill me, Stokven?"

The other said, "No."

He put out his hand and touched Estraven's hand, as if he were making certain that the frost was driven out. At the touch, though Estraven was a day or two from his kemmer, he felt the fire waken in himself. So for a while both held still, their hands touching.

"They are the same," said Stokven, and laying his palm against Estraven's showed it was so: their hands were the same in length and form, finger by finger, matching like the two hands of one man laid palm to palm.

"I have never seen you before," Stokven said. "We are mortal enemies." He rose, and built up the fire in the hearth, and returned to sit by Estraven.

"We are mortal enemies," said Estraven. "I would swear kemmering with you."

'And I with you,' said the other.

ONE GENERATION LATER:

When he saw the young man look at him he said, 'I am Therem of Stok.'

'I am Therem of Estre.'

[...]

'He felt the young man's pulse and hand for fever, and for an instant laid his palm flat to Estraven's palm; and finger by finger their two hands matches, like the two hands of one man.

"We are mortal enemies," said Stokven.

Estraven answered, "We are mortal enemies. Yet I have never seen you before."

Stokven turned aside his face. "Once I saw you, long ago," he said. 'I wish there might be peace between our houses'.

(THE PARALLELISMS OF IT ALL)

(Note: I finished Murakami's Kafka on the Other Shore recently which had people looking for the other half of their shadow ft Aristophanes myth of people being cut in half at the beginning of the world. So brain is whirring)

But then I flicked back and found Chapter 17: an Orgota Creation Myth. In the beginning there were 39 siblings. Endondurath killed 37 of them, built a house from their bodies, then went into kemmer. His last brother, who had ran away, came back, found him and they coupled, birthing mankind. 'The name of the other, the younger brother, the father, his name is not known.'

Each of the children born to them had a piece of darkness that followed him wherever he went by daylight. Edondurath said, 'Why are my sons followed thus by darkness?' His kemmering said, 'Because they were born in the house of flesh, therefore death follows at their heels. They are in the middle of time. In the beginning there was the sun and the ice, and there was no shadow. In the end when we are done, the sun will devour itself and shadow will eat light, and there will be nothing left but the ice and the darkness.'

(MANKIND BEING BORN FROM A BROTHER-BROTHER KEMMER)

And then Chapter 7:

Incest is permitted […] Siblings are not however allowed to vow kemmering, not keep kemmering after the birth of a child to one of the pair.

AND THEN THE CONFRONTATION BETWEEN ESTRAVEN AND ASHE IN CHAPTER 6, WHEN HE JUST GOT EXILED (fyi Therem is special name for Estraven — )

[Ashe]'Ten years ago in this month of Tuwa we took oath—'

'And three years ago you broke it, leaving me, which was a wise choice.'

'I never broke the vow we swore, Therem.'

'True. There was none to break. It was a false vow, a second vow you know it; you knew it then. The only true vow of faithfulness I ever swore was not spoken, not could it be spoken, and the man I swore it to is dead and the promise broken, long ago. You owe me nothing, not I you. Let me go.'

(dots, connecting, yelling increasing.)

AND THEN IN THE VERY BEGINNING. THE FIRST HEARTH TALE IN CHAPTER 2!

In those days, as now, full brothers were permitted to keep kemmer until one of them should bear a child, but after that they must separate; so it was never permitted to vow kemmering for life. Yet this they had done. When a child was conceived the Lord of Shath commanded them to break their vow and never meet in kemmer again. On hearing this command, one of the two, the one who bore the child [...] committed suicide. Then the people of the Hearth rose up against the the other brother and drove him out of Hearth and Domain.

Gethern is exiled and walks northward through the Ice (sounds familiar?), leaving his name and shadow in Shath. He encounters a blizzard and meets his brother again.

The white man said, 'I am your brother and kemmering, Hode.'

Hode was the name of his brother who killed himself. And Getheren saw that the white man was his brother in body and feature. But there was no longer any life in his belly, and his voice sounded thin like the creaking of ice.

Getheren said, 'What place is this?'

Hode answered, 'This is the place inside the blizzard. We who kill ourselves dwell here. Here you and I shall keep our vow.'

Gethern was frightened, and he said, 'I will not stay here [...] you broke your vow, throwing away your life. And now you cannot say my name.'

This was true. Hode moved his white lips, but could not say his brother's name.

THEN CHAPTER 18!! Context: Estraven only told Genly to call him Harth, his landname, but when they first mindspeaking, Genly accidently calls him Therem.

'You called me — It was my brother. It was his voice I heard. He's dead. You called me — you called me Therem? I ... This is more terrible than I thought.'

'Harth I'm very sorry —'

'No, call me by my name. If you can speak inside my skull with a dead man's voice then you can call me by my name! Would he have called me "Harth"? Oh, I see why there's no lying in this mindspeech."

And then, "tell me about him" —> "My full brother, Arek Harth rem ir Estraven. He was a year older than I. He would have been Lord of Estre. We.... I left home, you know, for his sake.’

(DOTS. CONNECTED!)

Hgnnn. This is the reason I wrote this post. My mind is blown, I'm scraped clean like a dog's bone. Le Guin is crazy. I feel crazy. This story, the myth of the exiled brother, superimposed upon Left Hand of Darkness, changed everything for me. Genly is the narrator yes, but the protaganist is Estraven. It's Estraven who broke Genly out of prison, prepared the sleds, counted rations and led them back to Karthide. Every step of Estraven's past aligned with myth, but it was Estraven who literally (literally!) opened his mind to Genly. Estraven acted upon his fate and changed his future, and therefore the future of his people (What is love of one's country? // He served the master I served — Mankind.)

Consider this; at the very end of the novel, Estraven's father asks Genly to talk about how they crossed the Gobrin ice together (the historical past). But then the very last sentence is this:

But the boy, Therem's son, said stammering, 'Will you tell us how he died? — Will you tell us about the other worlds out there among the stars — the other kinds of men, the other lives?

next steps

• I want to read up on some things, the feminist debate right after publication in 1969, Harold's Bloom critical interpretation of LHoD, and le Guin's essay Is Gender Necessary (1976).
• Also, Ancillary Justice (I have not read this! Space opera about A.I and gender-blindness). I really want to see its take on worldbuilding.
• I've satisfied myself with how the dots joined for Estraven + his brother, but I'm not completely happy with my theory about the power to call names. Will keep thinking.

(Petty last words: my personal, very biased, reading is that Genly never truly understood Estraven and misread him up until the very end. I think Genly thought Estraven liked him and found moral superiority in rejecting that possibility. There was a deep, uncomparable friendship yes, but I think Estraven never loved Genly. He might have wanted him, like how he wanted Ashe, in a way that made him angry ("But Ashe's love had always forced me to act against my heart") - but it was not the same love he felt towards his brother. Gethenians only vow kemmering once.)

Comments

[prizefig]

scream, this is an amazing review. i read lhod november of last year which makes that about 7 years ago now, so i am struggling to recall any of my initial thoughts about it in response but i never really felt strongly that genly was overtly misogynistic or i suppose i just took his gender essentialism for granted and found his relationship with estraven pretty touching. and i don't think i ever fully/consciously made all these connections between the creation myth, the fable about estraven the traitor, and estraven's actual life, so thank you for that!!

i was kinda taken aback at you saying this book is not about gender, when it's very blatantly the Gender Book, but i suppose you're right since like 90% of it was in chapter 7 which i found entirely satisfying; i wasn't really craving a sociological perspective and i didn't really didn't have any preconceptions about the book going in so there was less for me to be disappointed about. the ambisexual heat cycles concept is so much cooler than omegaverse though, this is probably just my beef with omegaverse coming through, but if THIS was the horny worldbuilding premise fandom latched onto—

btw about ancillary justice, it's a great book (and trilogy but especially the first book) and i do think you will enjoy it, but it's kind of even less about gender than lhod imo

[hwarium]

hello!! thank you so much for reading this monster essay. It's super niche but close to my heart in the way where I knew I had to let it out even if no one would read it.

Yeah! you're right, it's because LHOD is The Gender Book and what I've heard about it led me to expect something different than what it actually was. So my mind was already closed the first reading and it took a reread to open it and Get what Le Guin was doing. And when I felt that genly was misogynistic, or that the book wasn't as Gendered as I thought, I kind of felt an Oh No because I knew I had to unpack and explain it in order to announce this kind of opinion haha. so v grateful you took the effort to understand where I was coming from!

I want to work with ambisexual heat cycles so much... especially with a Genly-type character. I just want him to confront ALL THE GENDERS. ALL THE HEAT CYCLES hahaha

Alright!! I'll get back to you when I read Ancillary Justice, it's on my list so I'll definitely get to it <3

[chestnut_pod]

Journal-hopping: this is an incredible review, thank you so much!

[hwarium]

thank you so much for stopping by and reading my long thoughts!!