I don't recognise your description of Tehanu at all. But that she recognised that the first three books were written at a time when she herself was still stuck in a mindset of fantasy being written a certain way is not controversial - she herself spoke about that. They challenged fantasy tropes in many ways, and were radical in her insistence of not focusing on white people, but they did not challenge gender roles.
The later books did that. But I do see them as presenting the men as evil, and the women as victims, "period", not unless you identify the idea of privilege and power as inherently marking all of those affected by it irrespective of how they engage with it.
But I think they did! The wizards of Roke were not stereotypically masculine. They had a focus on "Being" over "Doing". They weren't into rescuing princesses. (The one "princess" Ged arguably rescued, Arha, he did so by convincing her to rescue herself. And that wasn't why he was there in the first place.) They had a basically pacifist, non-interventionist way of living.
> not unless you identify the idea of privilege and power
The first two really evil men we met in Tehanu were ragged gypsies, nobodies. (Apropos that, Le Guin might have to had make some new revisions in another 20 years, I doubt portraying wanderers like that would pass without comment today). They were anything but privileged.
I liked the portrayal of the wizards of Roke in the first books. I don't think I'd ever seen men as men presented so sympathetically in any fantasy book before. Although they certainly were capable of embodying many traditionally male faults (what the first book is about, basically), they weren't defined by what they did. They were allowed to be. Which is, as I'm sure you know, slightly at odds with Taoism and with western traditional gender roles for that matter, where it's women who are something and masculinity is performed, won by doing.
Which is why it felt like such a betrayal when Ged did a thing, killing a guy threatening a woman, and immediately became a "real man" instead of a celibate weirdo.
> But I think they did! The wizards of Roke were not stereotypically masculine.
That's not challenging anything for fantasy, and it's an obtuse answer when the point is that her books were - and she herself has acknowledged this - written from the point of view of a tradition that focuses on the men.
In that respect Roke is an archetypical example of adhering to the gender roles: A school of wizardy entirely run by men who don't even have female partners.
> The first two really evil men we met in Tehanu were ragged gypsies, nobodies. (Apropos that, Le Guin might have to had make some new revisions in another 20 years, I doubt portraying wanderers like that would pass without comment today). They were anything but privileged.
Yes, in Thehanu. And in the first three books the wizards were all men, and the leaders were all men, and as you yourself has pointed out, while Arha/Tenar did not need to be "rescued" directly, she still needed a man to show her the path out. The women are respectively not present or helpless.
> I liked the portrayal of the wizards of Roke in the first books
Nobody has argued you shouldn't or can't. But Le Guin made the point very clearly that she had failed to tell stories from the point of view of women, and so she did that too. That doesn't erase the earlier portrayals.
> Which is why it felt like such a betrayal when Ged did a thing, killing a guy threatening a woman, and immediately became a "real man" instead of a celibate weirdo.
I don't see that as a betrayal at all. Ged had changed. People changed. The world around him has changed. And he had always been different in any case. That he was allowed to evolved through the story, and had a whole life in the stories is part of what makes them not follow the stereotypical fantasy arc.
I had certainly not read anything like it. Remember how old those books are - the fantasy of that age was closer to Moorcock, Leiber etc. Where in that sort of literature can you find gentle, hands-off wizards (hell, men of any sort) who live a largely contemplative life? And written well enough that it seems really appealing?
> That doesn't erase the earlier portrayals.
Well it doesn't exactly erase them, but it reinterprets them drastically. Also, even though Le Guin later didn't consider it good enough, the Tombs of Atuan were written from a woman's perspective. A woman who's frankly a bit hard to recognize in the book Tehanu. Isn't a bit odd that the former high priestess of the Nameless Ones, of a visibly different race (who the islanders are understandably afraid of) settles down in a domestic life, and coincidentally develops concerns about domesticity similar to modern women at that time? You'd think she'd have much worse concerns than that her son doesn't help with housework!
I feel like Le Guin devalued her own story in the first three books, failed to recognize that through its basic empathy it did tell good and thoughtful stories with a gender dimension that challenges you to think.
The later books did that. But I do see them as presenting the men as evil, and the women as victims, "period", not unless you identify the idea of privilege and power as inherently marking all of those affected by it irrespective of how they engage with it.