Accessing the ‘Other Wind’: feminine time in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series

Abstract

It is widely accepted that feminist speculative fiction (SF) provides an imaginative space for the exploration of ideas first proposed in feminist theory. This article demonstrates that the changing attitude to feminine time explored in feminist polemic from the second wave to the contemporary feminist poststructuralist approach can be traced in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series, which was written over four decades. Le Guin’s approach shifts from a second wave repudiation of feminine time in The Tombs of Atuan to a postmodern embracing of feminine time as becoming in the later novels, Tehanu and The Other Wind. A close reading of these texts shows that Le Guin’s images, and the action that flows throughout the series, contribute a unique vision of becoming to the contemporary feminist investigation of time.