Ursula K. Le Guin's NovelThe Left Hand Of Darkness?

Theory: Lucal used Lorber’s gender and social construction to explain that gender is something that we do by learning, not a something that we were born with. Whether we like it or not, we all do and we cannot escape from it. She also used Goffman’s view of gender as a performance to explain different roles she plays and costumes for different parts. She grew her hair out when she was in the market for a job and applied bright fashionable nail polish color when getting on an airplane. These examples can be related to theories of gender difference such as gender as an institution or gender as a rule.

Not only does Le Guin apply rhetorical appeals in her speech, but she also incorporates a multitude of rhetorical devices, such as sententia and antithesis. Le Guin utilizes sententia when she states, “Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure” (Le Guin line 30). Le Guin attempts to tear down separation by gender and bring people together on common ground by concluding that males and females are both bound to face failure because everyone is simply human. To this end, she aims to halt comparison between genders as well as the notion that women are always secondary to men. In effect, Le Guin follows up with the rhetorical device antithesis to build upon her use of sententia. Le Guin uses antithesis in this section to help her emphasize the point: “You will find you’re weak where you thought yourself strong” (Le Guin lines 31-32). Her illustration of antithesis further exemplifies the notion that gender does not matter when it comes to the struggles and failures of life, which all humans, regardless of gender, indisputably face. Le Guin ultimately deploys the rhetorical devices sententia and antithesis in unison to end contrast and conflict between genders and unite men and women alike.

Evolutionary gender determinism proves that men and women are different, not only in a physical way, but in a psychological way as well. As far as history can determine, men were always the hunters who were dominant and competitive. On the other hand, women were known as the gathers, who were cooperative and capable of doing several things at a time. Since men and women are different in their make up. It is a struggle for the two genders to live together and maintain equality and harmony without one gender dominating over the other. In The Gate to Womens Country, Sheri Tepper brings forth a solution that allows the two genders to coincide with each other. She gives a somewhat feminist view in her novel,

By having portrayed the female charactes in a superficial way, with no access to their minds from the narrator, and the “distant” behaviour towards them from the male characters, Le Guin makes a clear allusion to the subordination of women in the society. According to O. Neira (1981. p.84) “La mayoría de los papeles asignados culturalmente a la mujer están concebidos de modo que contrasten con la superioridad del varón.” (1). Mrs. Ursula criticizes this male chauvinist society arrengement. Nonetheless, as with the previous point, Le Guin does not state her point directly, but, instead, she recreates in the text the characteristics in which women lived in 1960´s American

Sex is the biological difference in the reproductive anatomy and genetic composition (Chapter 2 slides). Gender are the traits and characteristics that determine masculinity and femininity in people (Chapter 2 slides). Alex Hai who is a gondolier in Venice, Italy is a women who perceives herself as a male. Alex knew she was a girl when she was small, but she knew as a child that she did not identify herself as a female. When Alex was with a group of females, she felt she did not belong with the females, especially when Alex knew that the female group identified Alex as one of their own. When Alex was with a group of males, she talked like them and joked around with them, so she felt she belonged with males. Alex’s sex is female because she was born as a female, but the gender she identifies herself is male due to all of her actions and what she prefers to wear.

Discussion about female as the normal human model came up multiple times in class. One class where this was discussed heavily was the week we discussed gender and the words used to describe women. The language used in the text such as fireman, policeman, or snowman. Women aren’t used as a normal human model, and we discussed the importance of gender-neutral terminology. A student commented, “The amount of words associated with women versus men and the amount of stupid words in my opinion, it really blew my mind. ”Women are treated as the “lesser gender,” when we are as equally important as men. In chapter 3, Lips discusses the androcentric norm, and she highlights how men are the norm and their behavior is the norm we compare to women. She gives the example that women are found to be less ready than men to do “whatever it takes,” to succeed in a career. The desirable qualities people look to have are often associated with men and not women. These qualities include achievement, responsibility, and bravery. On page 16 line 7 a student reflected on the content in the Dream Worlds describing women as “Avenous, sexualized creatures looking for sex and attention; aggressors who won't take no for an answer. They are dependent on men for emotional stability.

In Ursula K. Le Guin’s utopian novel The Dispossessed, gender roles are one of the main theme in the novel. The author uses two planets, Anarres and Urras to represent the different form of society, to understand gender roles. In Urras, which is an Earth like world, women are treated as if owned by men. However, in Anarres, a person’s sex is irrelevant to the society, therefore there was an equality of gender. Le Guin’s purpose for this was to make her audience subconsciously think about how society view gender roles by uses the affinity of a visitor, shevek to an Earth-like world to illustrate the disunity of the Earth-like customs. By comparing the two twin planets, Le Guin uses gender role in the novel to critique our society by using

“Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive,” Ursula Le Guin wrote this in her introduction to her book The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin 14). In the introduction, Le Guin writes a section about science fiction and other fiction and how they are the same because they all have the same purpose and that is to lie. However, when Le Guin writes about lying she doesn’t mean the sky is orange, no, what she means is authors, herself included, created stories, characters, and settings for readers. They create these unbelievable worlds and the readers use their imagination to create the characters and settings in their minds. Readers of fictional stories use their imagination to find the truth in these false stories or as Le Guin phrased it, “ the truth is a matter of imagination,” (Le Guin 16). Le Guin uses lies throughout her story The Left Hand of Darkness to express metaphors and through these lies, the reader uses their imagination to find the truth.

Hoffman, et al study argued against Bems ideology that sex-typed individuals process information into gender-linked terms and non sex-typed persons do not. They believed that individuals do not have to be “sex-typed in order to use gender as a primary organising principle” (p.4). An example would be a feminist, who is unlikely to be regarded as feminine, due to the power struggle against inequality for women. Bem (1985) further (as cited in Hoffman, et al 2001) reconsidered her theory that “human behaviours should no longer be linked with gender” (p.4).

Sex is the anatomy that a person is born with, while gender is the way each sex is expected to act in society. In “She Has No Idea. The Effect She Can Have”, Jessica Miller compares masculine and feminine gender roles in both modern society and Panem, and how these characteristics can shape great heros, warriors, and caretakers.

Ursula Le Guin's short story "The Matter of Seggri" is a dystopian tale which is unfolded through a series of different characters' perspectives. The first parts of the tale are a series of 'reports' issued by aliens, which are followed by stories told by the planet's inhabitants. Seggri is a society that is almost entirely governed by sexual differences (much like contemporary Earth) although in contrast to Earth it is a matriarchal society rather than a patriarchal one. Le Guin uses different character's voices to narrate the tale to show the extent to which sexism can hurt perpetrators as well as the victims. It does not matter if sexism is wielded against males or females: it has equally negative effects. She also uses outsider's perspectives to show how what can seem 'normal' regarding gender relations when someone has grown up within a particular social context is, in fact, not intrinsic to human nature but is imposed upon the body by culture.

In conclusion, while investigating the research question: How does Ursula K. Le Guin explore dualism and wholeness in her novel The Left Hand of Darkness?, it becomes clear that Le Guin is purposefully and consciously incorporating these oppositional elements and their relation to her construction of wholeness. Gender, while the thing that tends to overshadow other aspects of the novel, remains an important and provocative part of the book, both fascinating and disturbing to the Investigators and Genly Ai who shuns one part of their identity before later realising that they are in fact, both.

This creates a critique of gender roles in society, which fights with the maintenance of the overarching goals of the novel both through the expression of traditional femininity and masculinity and radical noncompliant depictions. Neither author subscribes to feminism explicitly,

Feminist and gender criticism focuses on how literature interprets gender in different viewpoints. This criticism mostly views gender bias. The roles of masculinity and femininity play a large part in distinguishing the differences between certain gender traits. Looking at how

Gender is a word most people get caught up on today, there is so many different meanings. But in the 1970’s sociologist had a clear divide between gender and sex. Sex is a biological difference between men and women. However, gender was the difference between famine and masculine. As Holmes states that, “Gender socially produced differences between being feminine and masculine”.