Ursula K. Le Guin: The Role Of Women In Literature

Although Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was the first science fiction novel in literary history, men with a less-than-egalitarian view of women, has since dominated the genre . The low status of women in science fiction was not limited to simply ignoring their existence, but male writers also often reduced women to “squeaking dolls subject to instant rape by monsters—or old-maid scientists de-sexed by hypertrophy of the intellectual organs—or, at best, loyal little wives or mistresses of accomplished heroes” . With the rise of the women’s movement and feminist science fiction writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, people became more conscious of the incomplete and negative portrayal of women.

Le Guin approaches the subject of androgyny with a vision to consider the whole instead of two parts, with her ambisexual Gethenians that are female, male, neither and both without becoming a paradox. The issue of gender, or the lack of it, is what initially strike readers before they segue into the deeper philosophy of the novel . Gethenians lead both sexless and genderless existences for the greater part of their lives. Only once every month during kemmer, do they become sexually active and gain sexual characteristics of one of the two genders. Gethenian society has no gender roles and no division of labour, politics or economics.

He uses the masculine pronoun of “he” for Gethenians rather than the genderless singular “they” and seems incapable of judging them as human beings without defining them as women or men first. Le Guin shows Genly Ai’s gradual awakening as the heart of the story, transcending dualism and the sexual polarization of his own world and slowly growing to understand his comrade