[In the following excerpt, Reid investigates Le Guin's political concerns as evinced in her short story collections with an eye to her political concerns.]

Although first renowned for her science fiction and fantasy writing, Le Guin also uses her academic background in European culture to explore the tensions between public and personal responsibilities. Beginning with short stories that raise questions about the usefulness of certain commitments and ideas, Le Guin then depicts the turmoil wrought in individual lives by political conflict, especially when one faction wants absolute control over other lives. Finally, in two love stories, she describes the poignant struggles between the fears that keep people separate and the desire to trust another individual deeply.

THE WIND'S TWELVE QUARTERS

Although all of the stories in the first published collection of Le Guin's short fiction contain elements of fantasy and science fiction, her knowledge of traditional history and literature provides a realistic structure for the surprises of her ideas. The stories are arranged in the order in which Le Guin wrote them, so, to some extent, they act as a retrospective record of her development as a writer and thinker, especially because her introductions identify how each connects to her other work. “Semley's Necklace” introduces Rocannon's World; “The Word of Unbinding” and “The Rule of Names” explore the magical power of language of the Earthsea series; and “Winter's King” sets the scene for The Left Hand of Darkness. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” explains and precedes the establishment of the utopian experiment in The Dispossessed, whereas “The Day Before the Revolution,” celebrates the life of Odo, who has survived to see younger leaders maintain her dream. “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow”—a Le Guin classic—unites the action with the psyche; misfit Porlock finally finds a sympathetic friend in the vegetation of another planet, a biosphere that responds to the emotions of the human animals who visit. “April in Paris,” the first fantasy story Le Guin sold, combines the science fiction device of time travel with Le Guin's knowledge of French history and literature, as well as her wry humor. This melange of stories, which displays the wide range of Le Guin's talents and ethical concerns, serves as an excellent introduction to this writer and illustrates her ability to move through the centuries with ease as she plays with our usual view of reality by twisting her kaleidoscope. Europe is a setting as familiar to her as Earthsea or the Hainish universe and provides insights just as strikingly new.

Orsinia, her first major invented country, is obviously central European. The references to Prague; Napoleon; the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and other historical people, places, and events add a tone of authenticity to Le Guin's close analyses of the impact of political involvement on individual lives. She explores this issue in her collection of short stories Orsinian Tales (1976) and in the novel Malafrena (1979).

ORSINIAN TALES

The name Orsinia, modeled on Le Guin's own first name, was created by her in 1951 before she had published any major work. This collection of 11 short stories spans the history of a mythical European country from about 1150 to 1960; each tale ends with a date and a historical place name. “The Barrow,” dated 1150 and set near Lake Malafrena, the idyllic mountain village of the later novel, tells how a young count, nominally a Christian, pays homage to the ancient traditions of mountain folk when a self-righteous visiting priest fails to alleviate the pains of his young wife in the throes of childbirth. Only after the priest is sacrificed is the child born; ironically the count's name is later celebrated in the annals of the Christian church. “The Lady of Moge,” dated 1640, gently mocks the idealism of the romantic and heroic traditions. “An Die Musik,” dated 1938, and incidentally Le Guin's first published story, underlines the irrelevancy of art to the practical human institutions of state, church, or business; its only use is to teach humankind to rejoice.

Critic James Bittner points out that Le Guin emphasizes the circular shape of her journey through time by placing “Imaginary Countries,” the chronologically central tale, at the end of the book (93). It describes a family packing up after a summer vacation in which they have based their games and play-names on Norse myths. The professorial father, the affectionate and strong-minded mother, and the three imaginative children are reminiscent of Le Guin's descriptions of her own childhood summers. The tale sums up elements central to the whole collection: an appreciation of the power of the folk wisdom of European culture coupled with a recognition of the pretentiousness of some of its institutions, and the impulse to use this appreciation for the basis of an imaginative world that satisfies yearnings for traditional values yet allows the freedom to invent new pathways. In these stories Le Guin provides insights into her European heritage at different points of time, as well as raises questions about the authority of different traditions: what is true and important about the interplay between individual personalities and institutional authority, and how does it affect our current thinking?

Like most of Le Guin's writing, Orsinian Tales pries open traditional assumptions about some basic sociopolitical issues; her writing challenges certainty about what is useful or morally right. When leaders who are certain about their rights refuse to consider other options or to share authority over resources, tragic conflicts often result, both personal and public. Le Guin vividly depicts the struggle between people who choose peaceful complexity and those who would control their lives in The Eye of the Heron and Malafrena.

THE EYE OF THE HERON

Strictly speaking, The Eye of the Heron (1978) is science fiction because of the invented flora and fauna Le Guin uses to capture the ephemeral loveliness of the pacifist ideal in the hands of a militant society and because the setting is another planet. The book opens with a portrait of a wotsit sitting in the palms of the hero Lev; this toadlike creature with mothlike wings changes its color and shape with entertaining speed—fragile, elusive, yet too enchanting to destroy. Like the dancing herons, the wotsit symbolizes continual renewal and hope for a life of gentleness and peace, the quiet that arises from the balanced center between action and inaction. The other fantastic element in this book is the ringtree, a species that initiates the botanical cycle of the red-leafed forests when a single tree explodes its seeds with a loud bang, about once every 10 years. The seeds grow in a circle around the original tree, exploding in turn and creating new overlapping circles. This pattern is the thematic image of the book, which describes two circles of people, each centered on a charismatic leader, whose overlapping is signaled by an explosion. Except for these symbolic elements, the novel realistically presents the traditional struggle between pacifism and authoritarian desire for conquest and power. In her excellent discussion of this novel's imagery, Spivack observes that women occupy the center of this story (112-113). Although the moral and political leaders at the beginning of the book are men, after the fighting has turned their theoretical differences into a power struggle that neither side can win, the women provide the energy and direction for a workable solution. Bucknall points out the similarity between the choices available for Luz, the female hero of this book, and Rolery of Planet of Exile (145). Both leave families where they have no power and enter relationships with men who let them grow. While neither participates in the actual battle, both use their minds to promote social change. Perhaps this novel signals a beginning step in Le Guin's path to feminism.

The novel is situated on the planet Victoria, to which the government of Brasil-America had sent a few thousand criminals about a century earlier to establish a penal colony, now a city ruled by the dictatorial boss Falco. Half a century after the initial settlement, 2,000 more people came to Victoria, evicted from Earth not because of their violent criminal nature, but because they refused to participate in the military. These People of Peace establish a democratic agrarian community, named Shantih, near the original city. Until recently the two communities have lived in economic harmony, though the urbane Victorians scorn the nonconfrontational nature of the people they call the “shanty-town” inhabitants. Now, as the population increases and resources become stretched, the People of Peace seek another place to settle, away from the city and its citizens, who increasingly take advantage of their compliance by demanding more work and resources.

As mentioned above, the leader of the city of Victoria is Boss Falco, whose ideal is to establish a nation of rich estates where selected men would be masters of forced laborers from the People of Peace. He would like to recapture the aristocratic life he associates with the Old World of Earth. Part of his fantasy of power is that his daughter Luz will marry a wealthy landowner and produce heirs in the old European tradition. Luz, however, feels trapped by his expectations and by the ladylike manners that keep her from running free like the Shantih women she sees in school.

Like most dictators, Falco uses ignorance to maintain his authority over the people, including his daughter. Although Luz has been sent to school to learn the rudimentary skills of reading, her father discourages her curiosity and active pursuit of knowledge as unladylike and unnecessary. Le Guin's humor emerges with Luz's discovery of the truth that belies her father's aristocratic pretensions from a Red Cross first-aid manual, which had been presented to the colony of prisoners who are her ancestors. This revelation confirms her doubts about the ethical wisdom of her father's choices, especially his desire that she marry his righthand man, the power-hungry Herman Macmilan.

Luz learns more about an alternative way of life when Vera Adelson, the middle-aged spokeswoman of the People of Peace, is kidnapped by Falco and put under house arrest in his home. Vera resembles the older women made wise by experience described in Le Guin's essay “The Space Crone” (Dancing at the Edge, 3-6). She challenges Luz's assumption that men should take political control of the state while women maintain a home for their comfort and raise children for their armies. She explains that men like her father are not as strong or free as they seem but are trapped as much as the people they seem to control by the hierarchic master-servant structures they establish.

Falco traps himself further as he grooms the unscrupulous and arrogant young Macmilan to be his henchman, asking him to raise an army to keep the people of Shantih from settling elsewhere. He would prefer not to lose control over these peaceful farmers and their work. When he and Macmilan plan to invade Shantih, Luz slips away and offers herself as hostage to be exchanged for Vera, who has impressed her with her serenity and independence. In Shantih, she learns more from their young leader, Lev, about their tenets of solving differences through arbitration, noncooperation, and civil disobedience. Lev is convinced that these tactics will work against Falco and his troops and amasses a throng of people. Falco almost agrees to a peaceful solution when Lev and his throng confront the army, but the power-hungry Macmilan suddenly shoots Lev and violence breaks out. Seventeen from Shantih are killed, and eight from the City. In anger, Falco kills Macmilan. Shocked by these results, Luz remains with the People of Peace and convinces them not just to rely on reason but to act on their own behalf. A party sets out into the wilderness to establish a new settlement. There they find a wotsit, the image of the freedom to change that Luz has found, and a heron, the image of the serene strength of peacefulness. A new seed from the ringtree has sprouted.

Originally published as a single long piece in Millennial Women, a collection of stories edited by Virginia Kidd,¹ this lovely novel explores the same tension between an egoistic competitive hierarchy and a communal society of shared power as that depicted in The Dispossessed, and also the same ambiguities. The aristocratic society can breed elegance, honor, and loyalty as well as injustice, whereas more socialistic or anarchic systems can foster arrogant idealism and wrongheaded waste of resources. Le Guin is too wise to depict one system as perfect. There are other similarities in the novels. Like Odo, Vera has forsaken marriage and childbearing in order to work toward building a better society. Also like Odo, she lives long enough to understand the costs of her heroism; living in Falco's house, where she sees the bonds between father and daughter, Vera recognizes the depth of her own sacrifice. In her next novel, Le Guin expands this theme of the struggle between personal bonds and idealistic sacrifice. …

VERY FAR AWAY FROM ANYWHERE ELSE

This short realistic novel is a love story for young people told from the point of view of Owen Griffiths, a 17-year-old “intellectual” in his senior year of high school. He explains that when “kids begin to turn into people and find that they are alone,”² they begin to panic and join groups to stay invisible. Although he tries to conform, the effort to hide his real feelings makes him feel guilty and then resentful of his guilt. On his seventeenth birthday, his father buys him a car he doesn't really want. Moreover, his mother expects him to attend a nearby state university despite his desire to go to MIT in Boston, where he can study scientific psychology.

When he meets Natalie Field, her self-possession charms him. Although absorbed with her own musical ambitions, she listens to who he really is and accepts him with all his awkward faults. They become fond friends. However, Owen recognizes this relationship as a way to win status with his peers, to appear more “normal,” which is the teenager's way of maintaining a protective cloak of invisibility. When he tries to kiss her, expecting that “normal” relationships include sex, she refuses his advances. Distraught, he wrecks his car and sinks into a funk. His grades slip and he ignores his acceptance letter into MIT and their offer of a full scholarship.

Fortunately, when he attends a recital of Natalie's musical version of an Emily Brontë poem, the two renew their friendship. Natalie explains that Hugh's physical advances had come too soon in their relationship, before she had learned the necessary trust for real affection. He had felt rejected as a whole person, instead of understanding her hesitation about sex. Now she helps him find the courage to face his parents and work out a way to develop his individual strengths.

This brief lyrical novel ends happily, as Owen realizes that his love for Natalie will survive without the commitment of sex. She speaks to him through her music just as he speaks to her in words. They recognize the value of their unique relationship, very far away from anywhere else, where each dares to be alone and different because each can reach out and speak to the other. The next novel traces a more painful journey from isolation, with a more treacherous beginning place, toward a more necessary partnership. …

THE COMPASS ROSE

This collection of short stories seems to mark a turning point in Le Guin's writing, perhaps because it precedes her explorations into feminist thought and psychology, which broadened her definitions of truth and power. Scholar E. F. Bleiler suggests that Le Guin was losing her faith in fantasy as an adequate substitute for reality and was responding with parody.³ These stories retain the distance from ordinary people and settings of her early work, as well as present an intellectual purity that differentiates them from her later work. Because deep changes in thinking happen over time and emerge into consciousness only gradually, Le Guin's writing reflects her growth in uneven stages. In her introduction to this collection, she acknowledges a center from which other thoughts arise: the nadir, which contains “The New Atlantis,” “The Author of the Acacia Seeds,” and “Schrödinger's Cat,” all of which explore the connection between beginnings and endings. North is the direction toward Orsinia and west toward the approach of death.

“The Diary of the Rose,” like The Lathe of Heaven, examines the power of a psychiatrist over a patient, this time from the viewpoint of the doctor. The relatively cynical tone of many of these 20 stories is unsettling, perhaps because they proffer so little hope. …

Notes

1. Virginia Kidd, ed., Millennial Women (New York: Dell, 1978). Virginia Kidd has worked with Le Guin as her agent for many years and has helped her edit several collections.

2. Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 5.

3. E. F. Bleiler, “Ursula K. Le Guin,” Supernatural Fiction Writers (New York: Scribners, 1985), 1064.