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Literature can function as a sphere in which one can illustrate solutions or alternative notions against the discourses to which society is accustomed. The literary text may challenge several debates that either societal discourse undermines or normalizes. In doing so, literature constructs a linguistic realm with which the text underscores the problematic aspects of societal values. Not only the text may deconstruct such normalized values, but also it points at several counter performances against the ongoing power relations whose performance establishes particular hierarchies and heterogeneities. In this regard, one might suggest that the literary text intends to make visible what is invisible. On the other hand, it is the very invisibility of a particular discourse, notion, concept or a set of rules -manifested through language- that make them powerful, hard to resist, impossible to counteract. In this article, I’ll investigate the ways in which the literary text fails to counteract in course of challenging the hierarchies constructed on the basis of gender in society. I’ll focus on LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of the Darkness” and Gilman’s “Herland”. While “The Left Hand of the Darkness” and “Herland” both suggest alternatives to hierarchical gender establishments in society, they fail to establish a unique solution against those hierarchies, because both texts are performed in the realm of a language which is the sole perpetrator of hierarchies.
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Ursula LeGuin’s novel “The Left Hand of the Darkness” is a science fiction which covers a variety of issues on not only gender but also politics, science, nature and human emotions. In addition to the topics covered on the basis of politics and ones related to betrayal, fidelity, love and friendship, all these issues are somewhat interconnected to the debates around gender. LeGuin portrays a society whose members belong to neither of the sexes, male and female. Unlike our society which is constructed on the stereotypes on femininity and masculinity, Gethenians are ambisexual whose sexual orientations belong to the either of sexes. However, LeGuin takes one step further in her description of Getherians in terms of their sexual orientation. She depicts them not as totally deprived of sexuality. The Getherians experience occasional sexual cycles which fulfill their sexual desires with a sexual intercourse in which partners take the roles of one sex, either male or female. If the individual is alone during that period, he/she remains androgynous. Contrarily, if the individual finds a partner, he/she assumes one of the sex roles and performs his/her sexuality with his/her partner who at the same time assumes the opposite sex role that his/her partner assumes. The determinant of this immediate sexual orientation is based on a hormonal dominance which occurs on arbitrary basis. After this process of “kemmer”, the individuals return to their neutral sexual identities.
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Although the genre, science fiction allows LeGuin to explore and re-invent the gender roles creatively in her novel, at some point the novel fails to manifest a revolutionary solution for the relation between gender and sexuality. On one hand, LeGuin’s fictional thesis on new-sexual orientation represents a society in which gender roles are overthrown. In her theory of sexuality, LeGuin distinguishes sexuality –the instinctual force of human nature- from gender – a societal construction which establishes hierarchies-. The sexual distinction of the partners doesn’t in any way effect their social hierarchization; sexual activity is an action that only consists of physical unity and cooperation of partners during the particular sexual intercourse. In this regard, gender -the social construction on the basis of sexual orientations- is obsolete. On the other hand, despite LeGuin’s successfully illustrated distinction of sex and gender, one should point at another dichotomy to be fully able to explore further problematic complexities in LeGuin’s new-sex theory. LeGuin succeeds in distinguishing sex and gender which would be a step towards constituting a more egalitarian society; however her depiction of sexual activity regarding the arbitrary orientation of two partners fails to achieve a revolutionary stance within the text. Partners periodically transform their sexual identities into male or female forms, as if there is no other option. It is possible that LeGuin assumes that naturally, humans have two sexual orientations, which nevertheless reveal themselves during the sexual intercourse. There is nothing outside of the binary opposition constituted by male versus female. As a result, LeGuin is opposed to culture –gender-, while she is not opposed to nature, which is in fact a concept that is culturally constructed with the intervention of language to humans’ lives.
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Furthermore, LeGuin’s referral to Estraven as a “he” is also problematic. What LeGuin insists on telling the reader throughout the novel is that Estraven isn’t only a “he” but also a “she”. In this case, there is an absolute contradiction where LeGuin fails to provide the reader with a unique “word” which would connote Estraven’s sexual identity in the novel. In order for one to react against the hierarchization of gender, it is not sufficient to depict his/her thesis in the literary text in a particular language; the modification of the language itself is essential. Moreover, one cannot say “they”, “it”, or “s/he” while referring to androgynies; one should operate outside of the realm of the language which perpetrates the hierarchization of gender in society. In this respect, LeGuin’s connotation of Estraven as “he” contradicts her theory of a society without any gender hierarchies. Hence, the author allows the language to intervene the fictional realm on which the author operates.
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Additionally, in the novel, Genly, one of LeGuin’s protagonists, says the following while describing the women in his society: “I suppose the most important thing, … is whether one’s born male or female. In most societies it determines one’s expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners… Vocabulary. Semiotic usages.” (p. 200). One might suggest that what Genly claims here is the critical look of the author herself. In this regard, for LeGuin, being woman determines one’s linguistic expressions. However, one might object to this argument by claiming that it is not being woman that determines the language, but it is the language itself which determines the individual; either its manhood or womanhood. LeGuin, due to her interpretation of language as determined by gender roles, fails to triumph over language in her literary text, by underestimating its power over subject formation.
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On the other hand, Gilman’s Herland displays a consistent approach on the basis of language. In Herland, author’s fictional social theory cooperates with the language of the subject making perpetrator. Unlike LeGuin’s novel, in Herland the inhabitants consist of women. The society is constituted on strict principles mainly on motherhood. The Herlanders all come from same source and each one of them has their exact line of descent all the way back to their First Mother. According to them, “the longed-for motherhood was not only a personal joy, but a nation’s hope.” (p. 68). In Herland, being a mother is not only a personal responsibility or joy, it is also one’s duty for her community in the sake of solidarity. In Herland, there were no more criminals any more due to their emphasis of education in order to preserve higher qualities of the individuals (p. 92). In accordance with these observations, one can define Herlander society as a female-based organization emphasizing utmost rationality, eugenics, motherhood-nationalism and linear progressivism. In this respect it symbolizes the reappearance of a civilization similar to which was established by Nazism.
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In this society, there is no revolt against the communal organization of women because the rules and laws are set accordingly. Every woman is aware of her position in the society; conscious of her responsibilities, duties, and punishments unless she obeys those rules. As Walter Benjamin would suggest, the law in Herland is no longer law but life itself; a life as it is lived. In this novel, the debates around gender that the author establishes can be read as an allegory of a ultra-modernist and totalitarian social organization in which the law and life is intertwined in Benjaminian sense. Similar to LeGuin, Gilman has a fictional social theory about gender, which is linguistically represented in the text in a way that instead of deconstructing the gender hierarchies, the author establishes a new hierarchy of women over men. Indeed one might call this a partial deconstruction as Gilman operates in a creative sense in her novel and asks the question: “What if women were to handle the responsibility of constituting a civilization?” However, her answer functions as a totalitarian-fascist allegory; the language she performs while generating the literary text not only prevents her from exploring further complexities based on hierarchization of women in the society, but it also strikingly becomes a manifestation of a totalitarian order which will be actuated approximately twenty years after she published her novel. The difference is that this order isn’t governed by only women. One can suppose that Gilman was fascinated by nationalist-modernist movements in the beginning of 20th century, and this fascination was reflected to her novel, not only in terms of plot, but also in terms of language. In Herland, the notions of eugenics, nationalism, racism, and progressivism imply the reader that in the course of challenging gender hierarchization, the author performs a language similar to that is performed by the most terrifying totalitarian regimes of the century. Hence, while intending to represent a feminist critique of society, Gilman fails to operate outside the realm of language which not only involves in subject formation in the society but also symbolizes and manifests the will of the oppressor-perpetrator.
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In sum, both LeGuin and Gilman come across a constraint while performing critiques and deconstructions of gender hierarchies in their contemporary societies. That constraint is the language. On one hand, LeGuin suggests a powerful theory which distinguishes gender from sexuality, and she lets sexuality alone to exist only in the sexual intercourse as a natural-instinctual process while eliminating the notion of gender as a fountain of social hierarchization. However, her approach to clarify the sexual intercourse as an inescapable activity of male and female sexes and her connotation of Estraven as a “he” prevents her to fully counteract the gender hierarchization and at this point, LeGuin cooperates with the language which is the sole perpetrator of hierarchization. On the other hand, the utterances performed by Herlanders in Gilman’s novel not only delimits the author’s purpose of re-inventing a humanitarian and egalitarian society whose performers consist of women, but also it functions as a totalitarian allegory; a set of ideals whose continuity is enabled by language-the-sole-perpetrator. In this regard, the impossibility of setting challenges against gender through literature becomes a valid concern; which both LeGuin and Gilman fail to overcome. In course of applying fully deconstructive critiques on gender hierarchization, one might take further steps in order to operate outside of the particular linguistic realms on which the stereotypes on gender is constituted.
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LeGuin, U. The Left Hand of Darkness. Orbit Bookhose. London.
Gilman, C. P. S. Herland, Digital text file is downloaded from Project Gutenberg.
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