Re-read review: Four short stories by Ursula LeGuin on love, relationships, and society
Ursula LeGuin is one of the most "anthropological" science-fiction writers I know. As demonstrated in 'The Left Hand of Darkness'1, she liked to tweak the rules of a society or the workings of human biology to see how it would affect ordinary people's lives. These four stories, all contained in the compilation 'The Birthday of the World', deal with three societies with extremely different expectations for what love and relationships between people should look like. Most focus on sexual and romantic relationships2, but in the case of 'Solitude' relationships of any kind are considered somewhat dangerous.
1. In brief, the people featured in that book, the Gethenians, are 'ambisexual': most of the time they exist in an androgynous, asexual state called somer, but they periodically enter into a sexual state called kemmer in which any individual may be either male or female.
2. Although, interestingly, the one thing they do have in common is that the first two treat bisexuality as the standard mode of being, the latter merely as an option that is too normal to be remarked on.
Unchosen Love (1994) & Mountain Ways (1996)
The people of the planet O have a social system that seems very complicated to most other societies in the Ekumen. On O, everyone belongs to either the Morning or the Evening moiety3 ; you inherit your moiety from your mother. A marriage is made up of four people called a sedoretu. As one narrator explains:
I am a Morning man: I marry an Evening woman and an Evening man, with both of whom I have a sexual relationship, and a Morning woman, with whom I have no sexual relationship. Her sexual relationships are with the Evening man and and the Evening woman.
3. Moieties are part of the kinship structure in a number of different earth societies, most notably Native American and Aboriginal Australian. It refers to any time there are two "clans" within a society where one may only marry a member of the opposite clan.
In the first story, an Evening man named Suord, who comes from a fishing community perched high on a rock, falls suddenly and passionately in love with a visiting Morning man. Hadri, the POV character, also loves Suord, but isn't quite sure what to do about the pleas to stay with him in his strange, insular town:
They were all like Suord, dark people, handsome, fierce, abrupt, intransigent...Suord's dark beauty filled his mind, and his mind turned away, looking for emptiness, a space to be alone.
Suord is trying to find a pair of women for them to marry:
'Sasni and Duun...[have] been lovers ever since they were thirteen. Sasni would marry me if I asked her, if she can have Duun in the Day marriage'...'I don't know [Duun],' Hadri said in despair, 'I can't tell them apart, they don't talk to me.'
Wandering out onto a balcony at night, he encounters a woman who is surprisingly understanding, and who talks him through his dilemma. But when he tries to tell Duun about her, it appears there is no such woman...
In the second tale, sturdy farmwoman Shahes (Morning) falls in love with traveling scholar Enno (originally named Akal), an Evening woman. It is Shahes' responsibility to form a sedoretu to keep the family farm going. But there is a problem. Shahes now has two potential Evening women she could marry - Shahes and her old friend/lover Temly - and knows a Morning man named Otorra who'd probably marry Temly...but none of the Evening men are even remotely suitable. And she is heartbroken at the thought of losing Shahes, so she proposes:
'Listen...You go away. Back down there. The winter goes by. Late in the spring, people come up the Mane looking for summer work. A man comes to Oro and says, is anybody asking for a good finefleecer?...My name is Akal, he says, I hear you need a fleecer. Yes, I say, yes we do...Oh come in, come in and stay forever!'
Enno/Akal is not that disturbed at the idea of living as a man, but she isn't happy about the idea of deceiving Otorra - as they'd surely have to do, for who would agree to a woman in a Night Marriage? But eventually they go through with their plan. Otorra is hesitant at the engagement ceremony, and asks to speak to Akal, who nervously agrees. Otorra, equally nervous, confesses that he's anxious about the Night Marriage:
'I just only ever want women,' Otorra said in a shaking voice. 'A lot of people are like that,' Akal said. 'They are?'...'Yes,' she said. 'Everywhere I've been...Most people want both, but there's always some who don't. It's like the two ends of,' she was about to say 'a spectrum,' but it wasn't the language of Akal the fleecer...'A sack. If you pack it right, most of the fleece is in the middle. But there's some at both ends where you tie off, too. That's us. There's not as many of us. But there's nothing wrong with us.'
Of course, Akal isn't actually a man. So how will Otorra and Temly feel about that when they inevitably find out?
The Matter of Seggri (1994).
This is the darkest of the stories - made up of a series of reports from the same planet - but it has a hopeful ending. On Seggri, chromosomal mutations have resulted in a very low proportion of male births, and even fewer men living to adulthood. This in turn has led to a highly segregated society, in which men are considered valued assets of a community, and given abundant resources and apparent status, while in truth women have all the power. Boys are coddled in their childhood, but at puberty are sent to the "castles", where they spend their time training in mock combat, bull-vaulting4, and other sports. Men who are strong and healthy get sent to brothels where women go for pleasure or to conceive. Initially, men get no education. As one woman says: "What goes to the brain takes from the testicles...Men have to be sheltered from education for their own good." Which is the reverse of the sort of thing some people still say about women on our world, of course. But then some prejudices feel more familiar: The idea that men are inherently more dangerous, for example, or that they don't care about love the way women do. Women, on the other hand, live a full and normal life: working, studying, raising a family - usually with another woman as wife.
Unsurprisingly, this setup has some distinct disadvantages, particularly for any men who are not particularly interested in competing with one another, and for those who either have no interest in having sex with women or who want to have real relationships with them. After the contact with other worlds becomes official, and the people of Seggri learn there are other ways of organizing things between the genders, a slow shift begins. But, as usual, not everyone likes those changes. As one not-even-very-conservative woman puts it:
I like our fierce, proud, beautiful men, I don't want them to become like women. I like our trustful, powerful, generous women, I don't want them to become like men. And yet I see that among you each man has his own being and nature, each woman has hers, and I can hardly say what it is I think we would lose.
In this time of change, a boy named Ardar Dez entered a castle that is divided into two factions: the liberal "Collegials", led by a gay couple, Ragaz and Kohadrat, and the highly conservative "Traditionals" led by Lord Fassaw. The younger boys were subjected to all sorts of abuse - psychological, physical, and sexual - by the "Lordsmen" (a group of young Traditionals). Ardar Dez says:
Nothing in Rakedr was private: only secret, only silent. We ate our tears...I grew up; I take some pride in that...I did not kill myself...nor did I kill my mind and soul...Thanks to the maternal care of the collegials - the resistance, as we came to think of ourselves - I grew up...I knew no such word as father or paternal. I thought of Ragaz and Kohadrat as my mothers. I still do.
Ragaz's brutal execution some years later results in a mutiny, in which the younger Collegials slaughter Lord Fassaw and the Lordsmen. There is a hearing, but the rebels are not punished; two months later the Open Gate Law is enacted, allowing the men to go home. But their childhood homes are not home anymore, of course, and no one knows quite what to do with them.
We were all ghosts, useless, frightened, frightening intruders, shadows in the corners of life. We watched life going on around us - work, love, childbearing, childrearing, getting and spending, making and shaping, governing and adventuring - the women's world, the bright, full, real world - and there was no room in it for us. All we had ever learned to do was play games and destroy one another.
Ardar tells his mother that he'd like to get married. In another ironic reversal:
Her eyes widened. She brooded a bit, and finally ventured, 'To a man.' 'No. To a woman. I want a normal, ordinary marriage. I want to have a wife and be a wife.' Shocking as the idea was, she tried to absorb it...'All it means,' I said...'Is that we'd live together just like any married pair. We'd set up our own daughterhouse, and be faithful to each other, and if she had a child I'd be its lovemother along with her. There isn't any reason why it wouldn't work!' 'Well, I don't know - I don't know of any,' said my mother, gentle and judicious, and never happy at saying no to me...
After months of isolation and uselessness Ardar is going a bit out of his head, until his sister suggests he go tell his story to the Hainish envoy. And things start to turn around for him from there.
4. This aspect makes me suspect there is some Minoan inspiration here, hence the image. Not much is known about the Minoan civilization, but the artwork suggests they may have been matriarchal (or at least that women had a good bit of power), and men are frequently depicted with long locks (as is also the case on Seggri) and jumping over bulls.
Solitude (1994)
The culture of Eleven-Soro had long remained a mystery, but a female ethnologist figured out a way to crack it: by bringing her children. The female residents of this planet live in "auntrings" of huts; the men live in solitary dwellings on the outskirts5. But while the adults speak little to one another, and one woman never enters another's hut, all the women would teach things to the children. So Serenity ('Ren') and her brother Joy Born ('Borny') can listen to the songs and the teachings and tell their mother what they learned.
Ren is a very reflective person, which perhaps comes naturally in a life in which there is more thinking than talking. For instance, she notes:
Our daily life in the auntring was repetitive. On the ship, later, I learned that people who live in artificially complicated situations call such a life "simple". I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been, who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details, the way a planet looks smooth, from orbit.
The residents of Eleven-Soro insist that they are not people - they are persons. To try to exert power over anyone is called "magic". They don't just distrust violence or coercion, however; the manipulation that intense love makes possible is suspect as well. A parent can exercise such control over a child, but for an adult to call on their bond to another to influence them to do something is seen as wicked. Hence the aloofness. The persons do communicate with one another - there are delicate lines of relationship between everyone in the auntring, extending out to the even more solitary men - but it is all handled with a light touch.
The older children do often form close bonds with one another - "soul mates" - usually with someone of the same gender6. Young women often go "scouting" - traveling between auntrings, sampling some of the solitary men they meet and different environments, and then either returning home or settling in a new auntring. It is harder to be a boy. Some women drown their boy babies to spare them the need to leave the settlement, to run with packs of other young men, testing their strength. These packs of youths can be violent to themselves and others. When Borny slips away to visit, Ren and their mother see his lip is cut, curled up in a snarl. If they threaten the auntrings, the older men may kill all the boys. Eventually the young men split off from the boygroup in ones or twos; if they are a couple the older men are less likely to see them as a threat. Eventually, after several years of proving themselves against the settled men, those that survive find territories of their own near an auntring. Their mother fears for Borny's safety, and that Ren will be warped by this odd culture, and wants to take them back to the ship. But Ren doesn't want to go.
'I have no people,' I said. 'I don't belong to people. I am trying to be a person. Why do you want to take me away from my soul?'
The ship is very disorienting to Ren. She is miserable with all the press of humanity. But she goes to school, and learns about the worlds of the Ekumen. She learns that Eleven-Soro had once had an advanced civilization that fell to the accumulated effects of pollution.
And yet, I thought, if they knew the stories I knew about the Before Time, they would understand how magic turns on itself, and that it must be so.
She learns too that there is a second sentient species on Eleven-Soro, an octopus-like creature that no one has quite figured out how to communicate with yet.
Ren meets a Gethenian, Arrem, who she likes:
Arrem was not a man - I could not get used to having men around all the time - yet not a woman; and so not exactly an adult, yet not a child: a person, alone, like me.
Arrem persuades Ren's mother that taking her across the universe to Hain would probably kill her spirit, and notes that some of what the children learned was similar to aspects of Gethenian religion like the Untrance. So Borny and her mother go on ahead. Because of relativistic effects, they are effectively dead to one another, unless Ren decides to follow. So will Ren stay on Eleven-Soro, building her soul, raising her children to be persons...or will she return to the stars and to the people who work magic on one another?
5. I suspect the inspiration here is elephant behavior, in which males are more solitary but are loosely associated with groups of females, and females play "auntie" to each other's offspring.
6. It isn't entirely clear if this means something more than 'best friend' for older individuals, though Ren does appreciate Hyuru's beauty. Either way, it is deliberately a less intense relationship than either 'best friend' or 'lover' on earth.
I really love LeGuin's writing style, both in the poetry of her words and the economy of her storytelling and worldbuilding. 'Solitude' is only 34 pages long, but the strange quiet world of Eleven-Soro feels so complete and lived-in. The consequences of certain biological features of each world's residents, their cultural practices, or their history have logical consequences. This focus on biology and anthropology, along with the relatively low technology level of many of the societies depicted is unusual in science fiction, and gives many of the stories an 'earthiness' more commonly associated with fantasy. I also enjoy the fact that almost none of LeGuin's worlds are purely dystopias or utopias. They are good in places, flawed in others. Some - like Lord Fassaw's castle on Seggri - are more flawed than others; but as in our own world those dystopian patches rarely extend to everything and are never unchanging. There is light somewhere, and even in the dark times people find ways to love, to hope, and to build their souls.
