Institutional Scholarship :: Browsing by Author "Martins, Opeoluwa"

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The Subversion of the Classic: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Re-Vision of Gender in A Wizard of Earthsea
(2015) Martins, Opeoluwa; Stadler, Gustavus
Le Guin captures the tropes of fantasy literature in A Wizard of Earthsea as she creates powerful individuals, usually males who dominate the narrative, but who instead become projected into a deeply flawed Ged as a means of subverting and converting the power of these types of narratives. Le Guin emphasizes Ged’s bigotry, as he perpetrates and perpetuates the gender stereotypes that he has absorbed from the ancient society of the Earthsea realm in order to create a contrast between the emotionally and magically immature Ged and the Ged who becomes a fully matured wizard not after receiving his staff or graduating from magical school but after becoming more attuned to the nuanced construction of his world and sense of self. Le Guin uses Ged’s maturation as means of rejecting fantasy cliches of negative attitudes about women and other marginalized groups, but also to emphasize the variety of ways in which masculinity can be constructed and wielded. Through her construction and deconstruction of the world of Earthsea which is exemplified by language, Le Guin does not reject fantasy nor masculinity, she instead reframes what constitutes either notion and who benefits from these attitudes.