Gender and Glaciers: LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness
Hear Ursula K. LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness as a BBC radio play
LHoD Afterward: The Gender of Pronouns
Criticisms & Interpretations
Ursula K. Le Guin: “I escaped maledom by inventing the androgynes of The Left Hand of Darkness” (52, “The World of Science Fiction.” Ms. (Nov./Dec. 1990): 52-4).
Ursula K. Le Guin: “One of the essential functions of science fiction is precisely this kind of question asking: reversals of a habitual way of thinking, metaphors for what our language has no words for as yet, experiments in imagination.” “I eliminated gender, to find out what was left. Whatever was left would be presumably, simply human. It would be define the area that is shared by men and women alike.” (“Is Gender Necessary?” The Language of Night: Essays on Fantasy Fiction and Science Fiction. Harper Collins, 1989. 155-72).
Sarah LeFanu: Le Guin “denies the freedom that science fiction offers for political exploration not of the Star Wars kind, but of the kind that allows a writer to ask what is that constructs a ‘person.'” (115, Feminism and Science Fiction. Indiana UP, 1989)
Jewell Parker Rhodes: “Le Guin could not conceive of Gethenian sexuality without first relegating her characters to male/female roles” (117, “Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness: Androgyne and the Feminist Utopia.” Women and Utopia. UP of America, 1983. 108-20)