EVOLVING CONCEPTIONS OF TIME AND SELFHOOD IN THREE NOVELS BY URSULA K. LE GUIN: THE DISPOSSESSED, ALWAYS COMING HOME, AND LAVINIA By VIRGINIA CLAIRE ELIZABETH PELLA A thesis presented to the Independent Studies Program of the University of Waterloo in fulfilment of the thesis requirements for the degree Bachelor of Independent Studies (BIS) Waterloo, Canada 2014 © Virginia Claire Elizabeth Pella 2014 ABSTRACT Since the 1970s, Ursula K. Le Guin has been widely recognized as an author who uses fiction as a means to address fundamental philosophical, political, and ethical questions. Of the many scholarly analyses of her work, however, relatively few consider the implications of her depiction of time and selfhood. Those which do, moreover, concentrate on certain texts and take a limited range of theoretical perspectives. In consequence, neither the enduring nature of Le Guin’s engagement with these issues nor the originality of her treatment of them is generally recognized. This thesis aims to begin redressing this gap by examining the ways in which time and selfhood are portrayed in three major works of speculative fiction, only one of which (The Dispossessed) has previously been considered from this angle. Through a series of close readings, I demonstrate that Le Guin’s depiction of these concepts differs in important ways both from the “common-sense” understandings of time and selfhood prevalent in Western societies and between the three works themselves. The result is a clear evolution, in which the relatively familiar ontological framework of The Dispossessed gives way to a radical reconceptualization of the nature of time and individual existence in Always Coming Home, followed by Lavinia’s subtle but profound reframing of the relationship between time, the individual, and the totality of which he or she is part. Drawing on scholarly analyses of Le Guin’s work, as well as writings from narratology, phenomenology, philosophy of time, and neuroscience, I show that each text constitutes a systematic working through of an alternative way of understanding our individual and temporal existence in the world. This, in turn, forms the basis for Le Guin’s ongoing and in- depth exploration of major ethical questions. KEYWORDS: Ursula K. Le Guin; fiction; time; change; non-linearity; spatialization of time; present; dialectic; self; agency; experience; interdependence iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the support of the people around me. In particular, I would like to recognize and thank, in no particular order: The Independent Studies program and the individuals affiliated with it, for giving me the freedom to pursue my interests and the administrative, academic, and personal support to turn my intuitions into academically credible work. Dr. Anne Dagg and Michael Elmitt provided invaluable support during my first years in the program; Dr. Susan Wismer and Dr. Linda Carson acted as sounding boards and guiding lights as I made the difficult transition into thesis phase. Dr. William Abbott and Susan Gow have been there from the beginning. They and I both know that my debt to them cannot be expressed in words. Throughout my undergraduate career, I have been astounded and humbled by the generosity of the academics with whom I have worked, many of whom have offered up their expertise without having any affiliation with the Independent Studies program, or even any prior acquaintance with me. Dr. Norm Klassen, Dr. Paul Kreller, and Dr. Kate Lawson all agreed to supervise Independent Studies courses, giving me the opportunity to work through many of the ideas that subsequently formed the basis of this thesis. Dr. Jeff Wilson spent two hours explaining Daoism, by phone, to a student whom he had never met. Dr. Mavis Fenn agreed to read and offer feedback on a dense and lengthy thesis on extremely short notice. To all of these individuals, I am profoundly grateful. My thesis supervisors, Dr. Donald J. Horton and Dr. Sarah Tolmie, have been unfailingly patient, supportive, and helpful. They have been guides and mentors since my earliest years of undergraduate study. Above all, they have always trusted that I knew where I was going and why, even when I myself had severe doubts. For their steadfast and unstinting faith and support, both before and during my thesis, I can only thank them. Finally, my family played a crucial role throughout. My mother has been sounding board, editor, critic, and counsellor. My father offered steady emotional support and regular reality checks; my sisters provided a much-needed sense of perspective and humour. This project could not have been completed without all of them. iv DEDICATION For my mother, without whom this would not have happened. And for the rest of my family, who put up with me, even when they didn’t quite understand why. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..1 Section One: Time…………………………………………………………………………….11 Time in The Dispossessed, Always Coming Home, and Lavinia: An Overview……………………………………………………………………………12 Chapter One The Arrow and The Circle: Time in The Dispossessed………………………………..15 Chapter Two Time in the Valley………………………………………………………………………30 Chapter Three Fate, Foretelling, and Fictionality in Lavinia…………………………………………...44 Section Two: Selfhood………………………………………………………………………...60 Selfhood in The Dispossessed, Always Coming Home, and Lavinia: An Overview…………………………………………………………………………....61 Chapter Four Self as Agent in The Dispossessed……………………………………………………...64 Chapter Five Always Coming Home: Being as Participant and Participation………………………..82 Chapter Six Story, Memory, and Choice: Agency and the Other in Lavinia……………………....108 Section Three: Time and Being across the Texts…………………………….…………....127 Chapter Seven Walking the Gyre: The Evolution of Time and Being………………………………..128 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………....141 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….148 vi INTRODUCTION A great deal has been written, by now, on the work of Ursula K. Le Guin. Writing in 1983, Elizabeth Cummins Cogell produced almost two hundred and fifty pages of annotated bibliographic entries, all (with the exception of those listing Le Guin’s own works) for scholarly analyses of Le Guin’s writing. Since then, the academic literature has ballooned. Major analyses by Richard D. Erlich, Amy Clarke, Sandra J. Lindow, and Cummins Cogell herself have appeared, along with many anthologies (e.g., Bloom; Olander and Greenberg; Davis and Stillman) and even more numerous journal articles. These works tend to align themselves with specific theoretical perspectives: traditionally, feminist literary criticism (Clarke), anarchist and utopian studies (Burns; Davis and Stillman), eco-feminism (Murphy), Daoist studies (Barbour; Cummins Cogell), and psychoanalytic literary criticism (see, e.g., Esmonde; Selinger; Slethaug; Barrett) have dominated, although various shades of postmodernism are gaining ground (see, e.g., Barr; Caesar; Call; Linton; Thomas-Card; Scheiding). They also focus on certain recurrent themes and motifs in Le Guin’s work, including especially questions of gender, the relationship between the individual, society, and/or the natural world, individual psychological and moral development, and the motifs of journey and return, home, walls, and water. None of these analyses, however, consider Le Guin’s recurring engagement with fundamental questions about the nature of time, selfhood, and the relationship between them. While there is a substantial body of work on the thematic role of time in The Dispossessed, nothing comparable exists for any of Le Guin’s other works. Discussions of selfhood, though more common, tend to skirt the issue of how we understand the self as an existent – that is, what it actually means to be a self, to exist as an entity in the world. Many are concerned, instead, with Le Guin’s portrayal of individual psychological and/or moral maturation; others focus on 1 the perceived inextricability of self and other, or self and society, without fully exploring the implications of these ideas for the self per se. Scholarly discussion of Le Guin’s treatment of time and selfhood as such is thus almost nonexistent. This is a significant omission. Not only has Le Guin repeatedly engaged with these issues over the five decades of her writing career; she has done so in thoughtful, serious, and highly original ways. Failing to recognize this thus detracts both from our understanding of her work and from our overall awareness of the models we can use in thinking about these concepts and the ways in which these ideas may be expressed and explored in fiction. The chapters that follow aim to address this gap. Specifically, I seek to: (1) illustrate the long-term nature of Le Guin’s engagement with these issues and the way in which her treatment of them has evolved over time; and (2) detail the strategies that different texts use to develop specific concepts of time and selfhood. Since conducting a comprehensive analysis of these issues across Le Guin’s vast body of work is too extensive a project to undertake within the limitations of an undergraduate thesis, I approach both aims by carrying out case studies of three major works: The Dispossessed, Always Coming Home, and Lavinia. These works span over thirty years, making them representative of Le Guin’s treatment of these questions across a broad period. In addition, all three are conceptually challenging and formally innovative major works, which present clear and specific visions of time and selfhood.