Browsing by Subject "marginalized experience"

This thesis offers a feminist reading of the power of marginalized in Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1990 fantasy novel Tehanu, the unexpected fourth work in her Earthsea book series. Le Guin called the novel “affirmative action”, as it became for her a conscious reparative measure to tell the stories of the ordinary, “powerless” characters in the world of her creation. The aim of this thesis is to critique power as it is understood within the hegemonic-masculine frameworks of thinking and acting in the patriarchy, and ultimately, to offer a reconfiguration of power as approached through the experiences of women and other oppressed people. My central goal is to understand how femininity and other devalued forms of expression and ways of situating to the world could be empowered through a recognition of the power of the marginalized social position. I do this through an analysis of three female characters in the novel, Tenar, Moss and Tehanu. Each of the characters’ identities have instrumental value in opposing the patriarchal social order of Earthsea, which expects them to settle for subservience and compliance. However, I want to understand on a deeper level still how exactly the characters are able to put their alternative forms of powers to practice. For this, I employ the theoretical approach of feminist standpoint theory (Sandra Harding, Hilary Rose, Paige Sweet), according to which marginalized and excluded social positions have unique subversive power in opposing hegemonic paradigms. The three characters’ standpoints are built upon three levels: everyday experience, alternative knowledge and subversive action. Ultimately, my reading of Le Guin’s work demonstrates that examining and contesting the gendered conventions of fantasy and other literary genres remains a culturally significant project, and that a deliberate shift in attention on the lives of women and other marginalized individuals uncovers new understandings of power, not only as it is used in the patriarchy, but as something that can be redefined according to new values, based on human connection, compassion and trust.