Critique: Tehanu (Earthsea Quartet #4) (Ursula Le Guin)

Goha takes care of a girl, whom she names Therru, whose face and head are charred to the bone. Goha is Tenar from book two and this one explores her life post-adventure. Very few stories do this. Yes, it’s less exciting than an adventure, but it’s still interesting to see how adventure and excitement changes people.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

There were so many positives.

This book transitions between calling her Goha and Tenar. The change wasn’t sudden or dramatic, instead being done in a controlled manner. The point at which it became more noticeable was when Goha had gone back to Ogion. A mage, whose job relies on true names, calling Goha by her true name Tenar was a good, clear place to have the demarcation.

Ogion tells Tenar to wait, but not what for. Tenar agrees because she has nothing else to do and she thinks, ‘What else have I ever done?’ Clearly she feels like an observer in her own life. Tenar asks if she should sleep with Sparrowhawk and he says she’ll have to be patient. She says she’s been patient for twenty-five years. So maybe the all she’s ‘ever done’ was wait for Sparrowhawk to come back to her?

For his burial, Ogion is put on his side with his knees bent in the foetal position, something very typical in the burials in ancient history. As the author set Earthsea pre-medieval period, this was a very good detail.

The witch Moss said that the power of women was older than the Making that goes ‘back into the dark’. As in, the Nameless Ones? This could explain why the wizards have such a negative view of witchcraft, because they have a negative view of the Nameless Ones.

 

The Earthsea Quartet isn’t a comedy series. So when something funny does crop up, it’s instantly noticeable.

When someone says they should ‘keep the foreign riffraff out’, the prose follows on with, ‘Tenar nodded her foreign head pleasantly.’ This had me chuckling really hard.

When Tenar says Sparrowhawk hasn’t eaten all day, he responds by saying, ‘There was a man there.’ That made me laugh because people being present has made me avoid food before, too.

 

There were several concepts that made one pause for thought.

Tenar chose to become a housewife and a mother, the only position of authority women had. But Tenar notes that this authority was given/bestowed/allowed by men. So is that authority real or is it another form of control?

It says that Tenar didn’t understand Sparrowhawk’s ‘shame... A woman got used to shame.’ Women are shamed for what men are praised for. Yes, men are shamed, but only for what’s considered feminine, which inadvertently shames women because they do the feminine stuff. Meaning women are shamed for everything.

The Gontish people forgave her ‘foreignness’. At first, one might find it bizarre to forgive people for what they are rather than what they’ve done. But even today, people get mad over what people are (foreign, gay, black, woman). So despite being something I wanted to dismiss as stupid and illogical, it made me reflect on how stuid and illogical society can be.

Complaints weren’t ‘just the complaint each generation makes that things aren’t what they used to be and the world’s going to the dogs.’ Literally everyone ever complains about the younger generations. It’s nice to see the author, or in fact anyone, acknowledge this.

 

So yes, there were problems.

We don’t get the name of the burnt girl (Therru) for quite some time, even though she was physically present in the story. If there is a reason to keep important information hidden, that’s fine. But I couldn’t find the value in withholding the name in this instance.

It says that Ogion never touched her and yet in the same paragraph says when ‘she leaned against him, he’d stroke her hair.’ So Ogion clearly has touched her in the past.

One sentence is started with a lower-case letter: ‘always of yourself?’

There was a confusing three pages. The gist was that wizards bind themselves to be celibate in exchange for their magical power. But it lacked clarity. Ambiguity can be useful in storytelling but that’s different from poor writing. I wish these pages had been rewritten into something better.

It states that Tenar was the pupil of the mage, despite her saying she rejected that life. This contradiction was unnecessary.

Goha wraps Therru up, saying the blankets were like a cocoon that would hatch in the morning. ‘The ruined little butterfly.’ That’s rather harsh. One might say harshness is within Goha’s character, considering she wonders if she should have let Therru die. Goha was also harsh when she was the Priestess of the Nameless Ones. But the very reason for letting Therru die was that it would have been kinder than life. That’s not harshness but kindness. Considering the rest of Goha’s behaviour, it’s clear that harshness isn’t within Goha’s character.

 

Much of this book focuses on the relationship between dragons and humans. It’s a background theme that gets steadily more important to the plot. This development was managed well.

Goha tells Therru a story where a women could change into a dragon. She sings that dragons were once a single, winged race. Despite this split, some retained a human mind and a dragon heart.

There’s a fan that, with the aid of sunlight, depicts humans with dragon wings and dragons with human eyes. Remember, in book two it’s noted that dragons talk about the human Erreth-Akbe as if he were a dragon.

Therru’s scars are hot, like a ‘horny-skinned wild creature… escaping’. Hot, wild and hard-skinned like a dragon, maybe? A witch says Therru’s power is beyond the teaching of ‘any witch or wizard.’ There’s only one magical thing this fits with: dragons. When Therru chooses to stay with Tenar and Sparrowhawk, the dragon Kalessin says, “I give you my child.”

Therru knows Aspen’s true name. Knowing something’s true name is something a wizard trains to do yet Therru, a seven year-old without training, knows it. True names are in the Old Speech and, as noted in previous books, dragons are the Old Speech, so they’d know something’s true name.

So the ideas of humans and dragons once being one is very prevalent. Then there are loads of clues that Therru is an individual who is both.

 

A gentle story told well, this book was well-though out. After the disaster of book three, it was great that the follow-up book was brimming with positivity.

It shows how life can proceed in a normal fashion after epic adventures, even all the mundane aspects. It directly talks about the fundamental differences between male and female magic so that the readers know it’s a substantively different, rather than just discriminatory. The dragon-human link is fascinating.

I’m so glad I picked this quartet up off the shelf!