Race and gender in Earthsea
Note while you are reading A Wizard of Earthsea Le Guin’s depiction of race and gender. Is there anything surprising in this? Why? Gender stereotypes in A wizard of Earthsea are obvious. The wizard school at Roke takes boys only. All the great mages are men. Female mages are either weak magicians such as the witch who first taught Ged, or they are wicked witches like the beguiler of Osskil. As described in Chapter 1, there are two sayings on Gont, “weak as women’s magic,” and ‘wicked as women’s magic”. Other women appear as handmaidens, such as the Lady of O, who was consort to her Lord, or Vetch’s sister Yarrow, who cooked for Vetch and Ged and gazed at Ged admiringly. This stereotyping is surprising in a supposedly feminist author like Le Guin, one who would go on to write the Left hand of darkness and The dispossessed , both of which treat men and woman as different but equal, much as a more modern author might do. Le Guin became aware of sexual stereotypes and corr...