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Winner of the 1990 Nebula Award for Science Fiction, TEHANU is, in many ways, a
radical departure from A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, THE TOMBS OF ATUAN and THE FARTHEST SHORE. In
1972, THE FARTHEST SHORE was published and the popular trilogy appeared to be complete.
But Ursula K. Le Guin, who always described the Earthsea series as "a four-legged
chair missing a leg," finally wrote the fourth book 20 years later.
In TEHANU, Ged and Tenar (the teenage priestess from the second novel) are reunited, but
Ged is now powerless and Tenar has adopted an abused child, Tehanu. Le Guin may be working
with the same characters, but her attitude towards them and Earthsea has become more
complicated. While it is not necessary to read A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA and THE FARTHEST SHORE
to understand TEHANU, reading THE TOMBS OF ATUAN will show readers how Ged and Tenar's
romantically charged meeting in an underground labyrinth evolved into love and commitment.
As the most powerful wizard on Earthsea, Ged was required to remain celibate and attend to
a number of dangerous quests. Tenar, yearning to be accepted by other people after her
escape from the Tombs of Atuan, married a farmer and settled down on the island of
Gont.
Returning from his last quest injured and ashamed, Ged seeks out Tenar and Ogion, his
former master. Twenty-five years have passed since Tenar's escape from the Tombs and she
is now a widow. Le Guin uses Tenar's encounters with men and women to make a feminist
critique of Earthsea and its sexist traditions. Although readers were not usually privy to
the internal monologues of characters like Ged and Ogion, Le Guin tells us exactly what
Tenar is feeling. The widow and her adopted child are frequently ignored, humiliated and
condescended to by wizards and other powerful men. In TEHANU, Le Guin looks back on the
civilization she created in the first three novels of the series and finds it frustrating
and deeply flawed. If only men can be wizards or kings, how and where can women cultivate
their own special power? The only thing Tenar feels that she can do is raise children and
do housework. Of course, by nurturing Tehanu and creating a loving home for her with Ged,
Tenar ultimately saves her own life.
Unlike the other Earthsea novels, TEHANU lacks urgency and tends to meander. The novel is
episodic and Le Guin doesn't try to make any of the new supporting characters especially
sympathetic. Although I loved reading about Ged and Tenar and enjoyed the book, I felt
that it ended abruptly and left a lot of questions unanswered. For a novel that is
supposed to complete a tetralogy, it seemed inconclusive.
In TEHANU, Le Guin seems to have discarded many of the themes and attitudes that dominated
the first three novels. Instead of speaking of equilibrium, power and balance, she focuses
on the importance of domesticity, female power and self-sacrifice. It may be a different
type of novel than the rest of the tetralogy, but it is a worthy addition to Le Guin's
impressive body of work.
--- Reviewed by Allie Cahill
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