Exploring the subversion of the sex and gender dichotomy in Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite By Reni Synnøve Sæbye ENG350 Master’s Thesis Department of Foreign Languages University of Bergen June 2020 Abstract in Norwegian Denne masteroppgaven tar for seg hvordan biologisk, og hovedsakelig sosialt kjønn (på engelsk «sex» og «gender»), blir utforsket og utfordret i bøkene The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) av Ursula LeGuin og Ammonite (1992) av Nicola Griffith. Begge forfatterne ønsker å stille spørsmålstegn ved oppfatninger rundt kjønn (biologisk og sosialt), kjønnsuttrykk og hvilke konsekvenser det kan få for hvordan man som kvinne blir oppfattet som menneske og subjekt. Bøkene er skrevet fra et feministisk perspektiv, hvor forfatterne på hver sin unike måte utfordrer kjønnsdikotomien fra to forskjellige ståsteder innenfor feministisk litteraturteori. LeGuin er tilsynelatende av oppfatningen at såkalte kvinnelige og mannlige egenskaper kan deles inn i to gjenkjennelige kategorier, mens Griffith ser ut til å avvise dette. Bøkene er tilknyttet hverandre, da Griffiths roman spiller på temaer og situasjoner fra LeGuins roman, og jeg kommer til å sammenligne og kontrastere der hvor jeg mener det er relevant. Denne masteroppgaven undersøker de ulike framgangsmåtene til LeGuin og Griffith og hvordan de begge oppnår å belyse kjønnsproblematikk og vise til hvordan sosialt kjønn er en konstruksjon. Jeg argumenterer for at LeGuin oppnår dette gjennom å vise hvordan sosialt kjønn blir konstruert via hvordan protagonisten i Left Hand gjennomgående tillegger kjønnede karakteristikker til et androgynt folkeslag, og blir hele tiden utfordret på sine stereotypiseringer. Griffith på sin side belyser sosialt kjønn som konstruksjon ved å ikke henvise til det, eller anerkjenne at det eksisterer. Jeg argumenterer for at hun etablerer kvinner som subjekt, uavhengig av kjønnsdikotomien gjennom å utforske deres kroppsliggjorte, fysiske tilværelse. i Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Laura Saetveit Miles, who has supported me beyond what could be expected of her during the writing of my thesis. Her excellent guidance and kindness have been greatly appreciated. My partner Gerry Amundsen deserves more thanks thank I can give for his constant support and for his ability to calmly discuss and question the content he has kindly “volunteered” to read. Without his encouragement there would be no thesis to hand in. Thank you. A thank you to my mother Reidun, who instilled in me the importance of higher education, and lastly, a thank you to my friends for being who they are and for cheering me up during writer’s blocks and other general anxieties. iiii Table of Contents Abstract in Norwegian………………………………………………………………………...i Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………...ii Table of Contents………….………………………………………………………………....iii Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………...1 This Thesis……………………………………………………………………………..3 Theoretical framework………………………...…………………………………….....5 Chapter 1: Critical reception of The Left Hand of Darkness: Ursula K. LeGuin and later critics…………………………………………………………………………………………11 LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness and critical dialogue…………………………...11 A literary review of selected critical responses to The Left Hand of Darkness………………………………………………………………………………20 Critical reception of The Left Hand of Darkness……………………………..............20 Chapter 2: Textual analysis of LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness: Gendering the androgynous…………………………………………………………………………………38 Instances of overt gendering in The Left Hand of Darkness….………………………40 Ambiguous or covert gendering in The Left Hand of Darkness……………………...45 Chapter 3: Women as subjects in Nicola Griffith's Ammonite…………………………...56 Nicola Griffith and Ammonite………………………………………………………...56 Summary of Ammonite………………………………………………………………..57 Links between Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite and Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness………………………………………………………………………………60 Critical reception of Ammonite……………………………………………………….64 Background…………………………………………………………………………...66 Analysis and comparison of Ammonite to The Left Hand of Darkness……………...67 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………76 Feminist science fiction today………………………………………………………...77 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………80 iii0 Introduction Feminist science fiction, defined as science fiction that focuses on exploring themes such as sexuality, gender, and reproduction, is a relatively new phenomenon within science fiction, emerging as a recognizable subgenre during the second wave of feminism that lasted from the 1960s until the 1980s. Before this, science fiction overall (especially within the United States) had been characterized by conservative attitudes towards themes relating to the examination of sex and gender. In his book Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (2002), Brian Attebery explains that these attitudes were probably due to science fiction's "role as a commercial product" that "tended to push it toward safe predictability and a reinforcement of existing social roles" (Attebery 2002, 5). The genre was in this way decidedly more exclusive than inclusive, and its underlying misogynistic tendencies went generally unquestioned. There were nevertheless authors that explored issues of sex and gender, but in a "deeply encrypted" manner by using science fiction code. According to Attebery, science fiction signs such as robots, aliens, psychic powers, and the like, could also be used as gender markers in a story (Attebery 2002, 5-6). Changes within the genre during the 1950s eased up on the restrictions on writing about sexual taboos, and more women writers (and probably readers) led to increasing changes in depictions of different forms of gender-expression (Attebery 2002, 6). This shift opened the way for the later feminist works of science fiction that were to be published during the 1970s, introduced by author Ursula K. LeGuin (1929-2018) and her novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). LeGuin gained widespread critical acclaim for her examination of feminist issues in Left Hand, where she explored sexual and gendered difference from an anthropological point of view, creating a world populated by an androgynous, ambisexual and genderless people. It was one of few, if any, works of science fiction at the time that dealt with these themes extensively. Left Hand helped pave the way for other women and feminist writers of science fiction, enabling them to enter these discussions more readily than before. In the subsequent decade, some of the most well-known science fiction novels exploring feminist issues were published, such as Joanna Russ' The Female Man (1970), Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground (1979). These, and later works, were undoubtedly inspired by Left Hand, one of the more evident of these perhaps being Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. Piercy writes about Consuelo, a Latin-American woman who is oppressed by a patriarchal state by being institutionalized for defending herself 1 and her daughter from violence. She hallucinates or is contacted by an androgynous woman from a future utopia where all the ills of society have been done away with in a classless, genderless society, due to Consuelo’s resistance and sabotage of the patriarchy in the present. Another author who was clearly influenced by LeGuin was Nicola Griffith, who debuted with her science fiction novel Ammonite (1992) over two decades after Left Hand’s publication. Ammonite picks up on many of the elements explored in LeGuin’s novel and follows the journey of a female anthropologist who travels to a newly discovered planet populated solely by women, portraying the protagonist’s experiences, interactions and integration into this society. In this thesis, I examine how gender is portrayed and examined in LeGuin’s Left Hand and Griffith’s Ammonite. The novels are connected plot-wise and thematically, and yet both authors have their own distinct take on exploring the matters of sexual and gendered difference. My focus will be on the aspects that I believe show how gender works in the respective novels, and how gendering is or is not employed to make a statement about the subjectivity and humanity of women. I define subjectivity as the notion that a woman is as much of a subject as a man, possessing autonomy, agency and personhood. This is the opposite of being cast in an object position, that is the practice of categorizing women or other minority groups in society as "less than" or "other." As Ellen Anderson, Cynthia Millett and Diana Meyers succinctly state in their article "Feminist perspectives on the Self": "To be the Other is to be a non-subject, a non-agent—in short, a mere thing. Women’s selfhood has been systematically subordinated or even outright denied by law, customary practice, and cultural stereotypes” (2020). LeGuin examines this “othering” in Left Hand by reflecting on how gender-stereotypes are portrayed and used to construe, in this case, women, as the “Other.” This is done by using the concept of androgyny as a literary tool to examine, exemplify and expose gender bias through the main protagonist’s interactions with a people who challenges his notions of gender categorization. LeGuin thus questions the misogynist sentiments that seeks to fix sexual and gendered difference into a hierarchical, binary system that values men over women and the masculine over the feminine. I argue that LeGuin exposes and challenges the sex and gender