I just finished the Dispossessed and yeah I think if I read it as a teenager I would’ve had a head start on where I was headed. My hesitation with recommending them for teenagers is not that teenagers shouldn’t read them but that I’m not comfortable being the one to call for books with sexual components to be part of the curriculi for them. Though both, especially had they been available as options for summer reading would have been enlightening.
I do think both feel dated though, but only in the gendered interactions. The terran on Winter having these gender issues makes sense, it’s the point of the story. But on Anarres the Odonians feel gender divisions in a way that feels like if written today would have explanations. Honestly i feel that even 10 years later, but definitely 20 LeGuinn would have written Odonians as seeing gender as trait only affecting that which it must rather than as a source of division, conflict, and frustration. And in that vein in both books the cold war is powerful and omnipresent lingering over every aspects of these books, especially the Vietnam war. In the Dispossessed it has to be, that’s the point, but it is dealt with in a way where you can feel the 1970s in it.
I don’t think these elements take from the stories though, it’s no different from how if you know what to look for you can see that Tolkien didn’t entirely leave WWI or Star Trek TOS is a product of the 60s while TNG is a product of the 80s and 90s (the lipstick choices alone). A work of fiction cannot be truly timeless as a person cannot be truly timeless. But a classic is one that draws you past it’s time and speaks regardless of its time, and eventually you find yourself cherishing your Shakespeare, your Homer, your epic of Gilgamesh all the more for it has grown fine with age. I feel LeGuinn is aging very well indeed.
I think there’s a big difference between overly graphic sexual descriptions and the simple fact of characters having sex. LeGuinn, to me, does the latter, not the former, and I think it’s fine for teenagers to read that. They know people have sex.
I didn’t feel that the characterization of gender roles felt dated because none of these places are earth, they’re alien worlds with their own norms being described. We, the readers of today, are left to think about those norms in comparison to our own, just as readers were at the time the books were written. Sure, there has been some shifting of our society’s norms since then, but I think the points being made still apply.
One of the things I think is most masterful about TLHoD is the initial underlying sexism of Ai, our narrator. He’s just a little dismissive of women and feminine things, and the subtlety of his evolution as he really comes to grips with a race who alternate between male and female is amazingly well done. I think that message is absolutely as relevant today as the day it was written, and can be applied to more than just gender.
I just finished the Dispossessed and yeah I think if I read it as a teenager I would’ve had a head start on where I was headed. My hesitation with recommending them for teenagers is not that teenagers shouldn’t read them but that I’m not comfortable being the one to call for books with sexual components to be part of the curriculi for them. Though both, especially had they been available as options for summer reading would have been enlightening.
I do think both feel dated though, but only in the gendered interactions. The terran on Winter having these gender issues makes sense, it’s the point of the story. But on Anarres the Odonians feel gender divisions in a way that feels like if written today would have explanations. Honestly i feel that even 10 years later, but definitely 20 LeGuinn would have written Odonians as seeing gender as trait only affecting that which it must rather than as a source of division, conflict, and frustration. And in that vein in both books the cold war is powerful and omnipresent lingering over every aspects of these books, especially the Vietnam war. In the Dispossessed it has to be, that’s the point, but it is dealt with in a way where you can feel the 1970s in it.
I don’t think these elements take from the stories though, it’s no different from how if you know what to look for you can see that Tolkien didn’t entirely leave WWI or Star Trek TOS is a product of the 60s while TNG is a product of the 80s and 90s (the lipstick choices alone). A work of fiction cannot be truly timeless as a person cannot be truly timeless. But a classic is one that draws you past it’s time and speaks regardless of its time, and eventually you find yourself cherishing your Shakespeare, your Homer, your epic of Gilgamesh all the more for it has grown fine with age. I feel LeGuinn is aging very well indeed.
I think there’s a big difference between overly graphic sexual descriptions and the simple fact of characters having sex. LeGuinn, to me, does the latter, not the former, and I think it’s fine for teenagers to read that. They know people have sex.
I didn’t feel that the characterization of gender roles felt dated because none of these places are earth, they’re alien worlds with their own norms being described. We, the readers of today, are left to think about those norms in comparison to our own, just as readers were at the time the books were written. Sure, there has been some shifting of our society’s norms since then, but I think the points being made still apply.
One of the things I think is most masterful about TLHoD is the initial underlying sexism of Ai, our narrator. He’s just a little dismissive of women and feminine things, and the subtlety of his evolution as he really comes to grips with a race who alternate between male and female is amazingly well done. I think that message is absolutely as relevant today as the day it was written, and can be applied to more than just gender.