Shadows to Walk: Ursula Le Guin's Transgressions in Utopia

Abstract

Feminist Utopian Fiction Feminist Utopian fiction is a theoretical response to patriarchy (Gearhart, Peel). In this sense, Utopian fiction is a critical response to an unsatisfactory present condition, with feminist Utopian fiction in particular addressing patriarchal problems in its critique, imagining some kind of place where these problems are solved, or conditions at least improved. Patriarchy is cultural, social and political systems that are characterized by dominant male power and dominant male focus (Peel). Dominant male power refers to men's systematic power over women . . . control over women's bodies, their economic resources, their access to knowledge, their energies, their words as well as indirect forms of power such as disparate access to money and power (Peel 54-55). Dominant male focus is the privileging of male norms, positing the male experience as the sole one or the one most worthy of notice- male singularity and centrality, respectively (Peel 57). Feminist Utopian works critique dominant male power and focus and offer some kind of imagined, idealized society that is not characterized by male power and focus. How feminist Utopian writers solve problems of patriarchy- the shape of their imagined, Utopian places- reflects an underlying feminist theory. For example, one widely applicable conception of feminist Utopian fiction comes from Utopian writer and feminist theorist Sally Miller Gearhart. As Gearhart defines it, feminist Utopian fiction: a. contrasts the present world with an envisioned idealized society (separated from the present by time or space), b. offers a comprehensive critique of present values/conditions, c. sees or male institutions as a major cause of present social ills, and d. presents women not only as at least the equals of but also the sole arbiters of their reproductive functions. (qtd. in Silbergleid 161) Feminist Utopian writers (who are often also theorists: e.g., Gearhart, Joanna Russ, Ursula LeGuin) who share assumptions seeing men or male institutions as a major cause of present social have tended to solve problems of patriarchy in one of two ways: separation and countercolonization. Works like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915) and Gearhart's The Wanderground (1984) envision separation as the only viable solution to intransigent male barbarity. In those works, once women can get away from and experience female singularity, societal ills across the entire spectrum can be solved. Places like Herland are not just better than our present world- once are removed from the equation, separatist utopias are paradisal. Wanderground is also a separatist work that theorizes about female centrality- as a gender must be excluded, but who adopt female norms- the homosexual Gentles who embrace female centrality- have a place. Another theoretical response to patriarchy has been Utopian writing. Countercolonial Utopian fiction hinges on a reversal of dominant male power with dominant female power, positing an ideal world where women are able to dominate or inflict retaliatory violence on them, as in Joanna Russ' The Female Man TFM) (1975) or Suzy McKee Chamas' (1994) Riding Women series. In discussing these sorts of countercolonial responses, feminist rhetoric scholar Ellen Peel suggests that such theorizing may not be meant to be taken at face valuethat it is meant to be thought-provoking rather than prescriptive: Both The Silent City and The Furies (the last novel in Chamas' series) even present all-female societies aiming to conquer and enslave all-male ones .... various societies, each with its own types of power and focus are also described in The Female Man, by Joanna Russ and Daughters of Elysium, by Joan Slonczewski . . . both books are pragmatic in guiding implied readers through stages of questions about whether alternatives such as violence or an all-female society may be necessary in striving for feminist ideals. …