I've finished the first and read 80% of the second Earthsea books, and while I'm really enjoying them, I'm not sure what makes them particularly feminist fiction?
Or maybe they're not regarded that way, and it's just a coincidence that so many of my strong feminist lady friends really like them.
Honestly the point where Earthsea becomes strongly feminist in the sense most people imagine that term applying is in Tehanu, the fourth book of Earthsea which LeGuin wrote decades after the third one as kind of a response and reflection on the first three and what they said about how fantasy was constructed/viewed when she wrote them; it centres not on Sparrowhawk but on an older woman, and how she sees and experiences this world
i would recommend reading through all four and then letting it settle for a while
Hmm, okay cool, I will do this.
The second book (Tombs of Atuan) is also probably feminist for being almost entirely written from the perspective of a young woman who is in a position of both imagined power and enacted oppression, a stark drift from the first novel being so centred on Sparrowhawk; that was probably more notable in its time of origin, though, compared to now.
Like I said, Tehanu is where the real reflections on feminism and femininity in fantasy come to the foreground.
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The second book (Tombs of Atuan) is also probably feminist for being almost entirely written from the perspective of a young woman who is in a position of both imagined power and enacted oppression, a stark drift from the first novel being so centred on Sparrowhawk; that was probably more notable in its time of origin, though, compared to now.
Like I said, Tehanu is where the real reflections on feminism and femininity in fantasy come to the foreground.
On average, this thread was careening by at warp 2
@Undead Scottsman will create the new thread
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