Erin Minear
ENGL 210: Children's Fantasy Literature
The College of William and Mary
March, 2009
Ursula K. Le Guin's stated intention in writing her follow-up novel Tehanu was to "revision" the Earthsea of her earlier books. Written after the dawn of the feminist movement, Tehanu addresses key issues of female empowerment in the male-dominated world of Le Guin's original trilogy. However, sexism is not the only form of intolerance tacitly endorsed in these first books, as a critical reading of the series brings to light. The first Earthsea books also discriminate linguistically, asserting that the language of the fair-skinned barbarian Kargs is somehow inferior to the Hardic tongue spoken by the trilogy's central character, Ged. By linking language to the debate on gender, the fourth novel Tehanu revisions this claim as well, presenting the Kargish language as an effective strategy of personal expression for its speaker, the widowed protagonist Tenar. Once dismissed in Le Guin's narrative as mere "jargon," in the revisioned Earthsea of Tehanu, Kargish allows Tenar to speak in her own voice, ably navigating the various crises that arise when Ged's Hardic language fails her. In the process the minority language emerges as the clear equal if not superior to the Hardic norm.
In writing Tehanu, Le Guin's explicit purpose was to address the inequalities she had previously built into her imagined world. Citing the feminist movement's influence on her thinking, Le Guin writes, "From 1972 on, I knew there should be a fourth book of Earthsea, [although] it was sixteen years before I could write it." ("Revisioned" 11 – 12). The author explains that once injustice in Earthsea had been brought to her attention, she could not ignore it, but was instead forced to engage in literary "affirmative action… When the world turns over, you can't go on thinking upside down. What once was innocence is now irresponsibility. Visions must be revisioned" (ibid. 12). It is this revisioning, a righting of old, systematic wrongs in Earthsea, that Le Guin attempts in Tehanu.
In her essay "Earthsea Revisioned," Le Guin never explicitly comments on linguistic discrimination. She appears focused entirely on matters of gender, and gives no indication that other forms of inequality and intolerance may be present in her books as well. Nevertheless, it is clear in her writing that, at least subconsciously, she has linked in her mind the similar struggles of women and the linguistically oppressed. As a means of expressing oneself, language shares with gender its nature as a mark of identity, a similarity which Le Guin seems to acknowledge. Discussing the pressure on female writers to gender their writing as male, Le Guin comments that "if language itself doesn't belong to women, women can only borrow it or steal it" ("Revisioned" 7). In other words, to render her original Earthsea trilogy acceptable to a 1970s audience, Le Guin was forced to stifle her natural voice and write from a male perspective instead. The rejection of another's gender is therefore closely tied to the rejection of her language, a sentiment which surfaces in Tehanu itself. When Tenar suggests to King Lebannen that perhaps the woman he seeks is not a guide to the new archmage, but rather the archmage herself, the young king "frown[s], intent, as if trying to understand a foreign language" (Tehanu 181). By drawing this connection, Le Guin allows for Tehanu to be a redemptive story not merely of gender, but also of language.
Much like that of women, the role of the Kargish language in the original Earthsea trilogy is that of an outside presence, defined in terms of its opposition to the norm. It is introduced early in the series as being "not like any spoken in the Archipelago or the other Reaches, and [its speakers] are a savage people, white-skinned, yellow-haired, and fierce, liking the sight of blood and the smell of burning towns" (Wizard 7). These Kargs are cast as opposite the peace-loving townspeople of Ged's village in both appearance and temperament, and their barbarian ways are reflected in the obscure language they speak. Whereas "[t]he Hardic tongue of the Archipelago… has its roots in the Old Speech, that language in which things are named with their true names" (Wizard 20), Kargish has no such pedigree. It is instead dismissed as mere "jargon" (Wizard 9), the unintelligible and inconsequential gibberish of a bloodthirsty war-party set against the Hardic-speaking villagers. In these early books Kargish is only ever discussed in terms of the more mainstream language Hardic, and never to the favor of the former.
Even The Tombs of Atuan, which introduces the Kargish-speaking Tenar as a central character, regularly asserts the language's inferiority to Hardic. Whereas Ged has never had any difficulty in communicating in the Archipelago, his translation to the Kargad Empire leaves him "very hoarse, and mispronouncing the words of the Kargish tongue" (Tombs 94). While he has learned the language to some extent, it clearly does not suit him as well as Hardic does. Similarly, it is the Hardic language which Ged tells Tenar she must master if in the future she is "to talk with other men and women" (Tombs 161). Like her gender, Tenar's language in this trilogy is an expression of her identity that must conform to society's expectations – in this case, to a Hardic norm.
Given this custom, it is striking that the Tenar Le Guin presents in Tehanu has not abandoned her Kargish language, despite having lived in the Archipelago for years. Instead, while she speaks the local dialect to communicate with neighbors, she seems to fall back on her native tongue as a source of strength in times of personal struggle. Upon first seeing the burned child Therru, for instance, Tenar vows "in her own language" to protect her (Tehanu 6), asserting her dedication through the use of her native tongue. Similarly, when singing Therru to sleep, the widow at times resorts to "Kargish chants she had learned as a child priestess… She felt no power in those songs but that of the song itself; and she liked to sing in her own language" (Tehanu 83). In scenes such as these, the foreign-born Tenar is able to use the language to preserve her sense of identity, without being subsumed by the more dominant culture around her. Thus in this book Kargish has been transformed from the awkward jargon of the original series to an elegant mode of personal expression.
The language does more than simply mark Tenar's identity, however. It also acts as a refuge for her, providing her with the means of empowerment in ways that the Hardic language cannot. When an evil wizard attempts to curse her with a spell to muddle her wits, Tenar cries "out aloud in her own language, 'The curse be turned, and turn!'" (Tehanu 150), and only then do her frenzied thoughts calm. And the next morning when her mind again grows "confused, slow, unable to decide," Tenar realizes that Kargish itself can be her protection. She thinks to herself, "in her own language, I cannot think in Hardic. I must not. She could think, in Kargish" (Tehanu 152). Thinking and speaking in her native tongue, Tenar is able to avoid the sorcerous trap in a way that she could not if she were fluent in Hardic alone. In contrast to the earlier books, therefore, the language of the Kargs has uses which surpass even Hardic, the societal norm of the original trilogy.
Tehanu's new ennoblement of Kargish establishes that, in some respects, the tongue may actually be superior to the language spoken in the Archipelago. Nowhere is this condition more clear than in Le Guin's treatment of the child Therru's true name, which she is taught at the story's end by the dragon Kalessin (Tehanu 277). While Hardic is described in A Wizard of Earthsea as having "roots in that language in which things are named with their true names" (20), it is emphasized in The Tombs of Atuan that the language of the Archipelago and the Old Speech are very different in form (161). In this context, it is highly significant that Therru's true name is revealed to be that of "the white summer star that they called, in Atuan, in [Tenar's] own language, Tehanu" (Tehanu 90). Kalessin's proclamation reveals that the Kargish term for the star is apparently also a true name of the Old Speech. Yet despite its supposed pedigree, throughout the series, no name identified as Hardic is ever given this honor. In this regard at least, Kargish emerges in Tehanu as the superior language to Hardic, a clear inversion of the state of affairs in previous books. From a simple minority language, obscure and discriminated against, Kargish has been revisioned into a powerful and worthy mode of speech.
In writing the fourth installment of her Earthsea series, Ursula K. Le Guin freely admits that its purpose was to address the inequalities built into the first three novels. While it appears her focus is primarily on gender relations, the close tie between language and gender as modes of expressing identity leads to Tehanu also revisioning the linguistic discrimination against the Kargish minority present in the original trilogy. Discounted and denigrated in these first books, Kargish comes in Tehanu to represent a fully functional and respected linguistic system, capable of accomplishing some tasks that the more mainstream language of Hardic cannot. By expanding the role of the widow Tenar's native language in such a fashion, Le Guin allows her for the first time to truly speak in her own voice.
Le Guin, Ursula K. "Earthsea Revisioned." Massachusetts: Children's Literature New England, 1993.
Le Guin, Ursula K. Tehanu. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2001.
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Tombs of Atuan. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2001.
Le Guin, Ursula K. A Wizard of Earthsea. New York: Bantam Books, 2004.
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