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Merve Sargın
0324050067
Lect. Buket Akgün
İD 152 Research

17 May 2010

The Quest from the Patriarchal Earth to the Ambisexual Gethen: The Elimination

of Sexual Reduction in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness

In The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin recounts the story of Genry Ai who

is sent to the planet of Winter as an agent to persuade the inhabitants to join the federation of

Ekumen. While the novel reveals Genry Ai’s xenophobic, imperialist, patriarchal side by

means of his prejudiced discourse on one hand, it also presents his inner quest to be

reconciled with his splitted feminine side, Estraven to be whole.

The fact that Genry is a stranger to the political, social and economical system of

Winter necessitates him to take shelter in his bias that is imposed on him by his Earthly

society. As Judith Butler states: ‘‘The person has received analytical elaboration on the

assumption that whatever social context the person is ‘in’ remains somehow externally

related to definitional structure of personhood, be that consciousness, the capacity of

language or moral deliberation” (22). Ai’s prejudiced discourse from this respect can be seen

as a mirror, an extension of his character that manifests his xenophobic, imperialist,

patriarchal self.

As a starting point, the first reflection from this mirror is his sense of fear and

loneliness when he encounters with the unknown. If culture is “something, associated with

nation or the state that differentiate ‘us’ from ‘them’, almost always with some degree of

xenophobia and in this sense, a source of identity, a rather combative one ’’ (Said 5), it is safe

to say that his feeling “cold, unconfident, obsessed by perfidy, and solitude, and fear” (Le
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Guin 21) stems from his anxiety of losing his male identity which is fed by authority and

power in his Earthly society.

Carrying the fear of losing his manliness among the Gethenians whose outlook is

shaped by their androgynous nature, Ai feels extremely vulnerable and inept. Because of the

fact that the male dominancy over the female comes to an end by the elimination of

boundaries that separate the two sex, he cannot find any place in that society and feels like a

“monster” (13). Thence, as a last resort, he associates himself with the male side by

“forgetting that the Karhider he is with is not a man but a manwoman” (95), and keeps on

referring them as “he” because “[w]ithin a language pervasively masculinist, in a

phallogocentric language, women constitute the unrepresentable’’ (qtd. in Irigaray 14).

In much the same way, that Gethenian society does not practise war is something Ai

finds incomprehensible and almost immediately he comes to the conclusion that “they lack

the capacity to mobilize” and he reeks out his pathological ideas by likening them to

“animals” or “women” that are degraded to the lowest statues in the male-dominated world

when compared to “men” or “ants” (Le Guin 49) as the representatives of superiority and

Puritan work ethics.

In accordance with his rejection and humiliation of the female side of Gethenians,

his attempts for having dominancy over those people is an implication of his utilitarian,

imperialistic attitude. Although it has been more than two years since he came to Winter, the

fact that he is still not capable of “see[ing] them from their own eyes” (18) and cannot form a

real communication with them clearly suggests that he is not interested in anything other than

material gain. His utilitarian attitude is further illustrated in the example: while Estraven tells

him about the dispute between Karhide and Orgoreyn, the two countries of Winter, he does

not believe that Estraven will help him to persuade the Gethenians to join Ekumen but at the

same time he cannot stop himself from saying: “Trust him or not, I might still get some use
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out of him” (16). Despite the fact that he appears as if his only aim is to bring peace to the

planet, it is not difficult to see that by wearing the mask of a missionary who is imbued with

the duty of enlightening those who are uncivilized together with being immoral, he just tries

to make profit out of their country. From this respect, he can be portrayed as a man who is

desperately in need of other to assert his identity and he is very similar to Rudyard Kipling’s

White Man in terms of his “search for his manhood” (Kipling 53) in foreign lands.

Having explained his problematic of manhood in his journey, it is now proper to put

forward the idea that Genry Ai’s physical journey can also be taken as an inner quest for him

to be illuminated about his real place in life. To accomplish that end, he must first realise the

matter of gender so that he can understand “ . . . not only are the differences in gender

socially defined, but they are also socially determined ” (qtd. in Rom Harré13). Surely, to

come to the realisation that the role he assumes as a male is socially-based, he needs to

encounter with some problems that will help him to be more mature.

First of all, that Genry Ai cannot be able to accept the femininity of Estraven is the

most troubling matter for him to cope with and it is easy to read his angst from what he says

about Estraven: “It was impossible to think of him as a woman, that dark, ironic, powerful

presence near me in the firelit darkness’’ (12). This darkness of Estraven, in fact shows that

Estraven is no one but Ai’s suppressed feminine side and his inner voice that tells him the

hypocrisy of the politicians and the system. That Estraven left his country after being blamed

for the suicide of his brother and Ai is detached from the life and people he is used to also

shows they are in fact the alienated parts of the same self and need to be together for Ai to be

complete.

Upon being rejected by the King of Karhide, Ai’s hopes for persuading the

government of Orgoreyn end with his imprisonment because of a politician. That event is

very much significant in terms of their unification as it enables Estraven to find a chance to
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help Ai for his escape from the prison to the Ice. The Ice as a secluded place allows them to

be out of the influence of the society and thanks to that, Ai, recognizes his other self that he

kept away from himself until then.

As a closer step towards unification, Ai’s awareness of his other self is extended

through his acceptance of Estraven’s female side. Whilst until that time Estraven is portrayed

as a man who deals with politics and lacks the ability of caring and nurturing, after the

recognition; the kemmer circle is introduced to the reader. That time is a period of a few days

in which according to the body contact the sex of the Gethenian is determined. Being loaded

with these feminine attributes such as nurturing and giving birth, although they seem

traditional, there comes Ai’s acceptance of himself as a whole. Likewise, that he tells: “And I

saw then . . . what I had always been afraid to see, that he was a woman as well as a man’’

(248) is a clear sign of the change in his tone and in his attitude towards the other.

Finally, as a result of the process of illumination, at last Ai is able to be reconciled

with his womanly side and when the unification is thoroughly achieved, he no more needs his

discriminatory language while talking to Estraven. At that point the mind speech comes as an

alternative to the prejudiced spoken language, and Ai, by stating that “[he] felt his sleep as if

it were [his] own: the emphatic bond was there ’’ (252), reemphasizes that in fact they are

different parts of the same person. Nonetheless, after carrying out his mission successfully,

Estraven is not required to be a separate entity anymore. With this regard, his death does not

necessarily mean that he has completely gone; on the contrary, at the end he melts down in

Ai’s essence and becomes a part of him.

In conclusion, this research paper has sought to analyze Ursula Le Guin’s novel, The

Left Hand of Darkness and has aimed to provide a solution to sexual reduction by

demonstrating Ai as an example who has transformed from a problematic man to a real

human being with integrity through his inner journey.

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Works Cited

Butler, Judith P. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:

Routledge, 1990. Print.

Kipling, Rudyard. “ The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands,

1899.” Rudyard Kipling’s Verses: Definitive Edition. New York: Doubleday, 1929. N.

pag. 31 March 2006. George Mason University. Web. 23 April

2010<http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/html>

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace, 1969. Print.

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Knopf, 1993.

Print.

Welton, Donn. Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. Print.