gender

The men who like women and the men who don't. Yes we can tell.

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Tehanu by Ursula le Guin pg 119

“‘Ours is only a little power, seems like, next to theirs,’ Moss said. ‘But it goes down deep. It’s all roots. It’s like an old blackberry thicket. And a wizard’s power’s like a fir tree, maybe, great and tall and grand, but it’ll blow right down in a storm. Nothing kills a blackberry bramble.’”

Tehanu by Ursula le Guin pg 119

Tehanu pg. 101

“She [Tenar] was silent, trying to remember what it was like to have been powerful, to be the Eaten One, the One Priestess of the Tombs .. and then to lose that, throw it away, become only Tenar, only herself. She thought about how it was to have been a woman in the prime of life, with children and a man, and then to lose all that,

In Tehanu (pg. 61), Moss describes as man’s power as a hard nut in a shell. It is powerful and mighty indeed, but only limited to the man himself. Moss describes a woman’s power as ancient, dark, from the origins of Time itself. A woman’s power is boundless, unlimited, and all-encompassing. “Older than the moon, deeper than the roots of trees”.

Man

Moss exclaims that a man’s power is only within himself, like a nut in its shell. A man’s power is hard and strong, but limited only to what is within himself. Moss says that a woman’s power is different entirely, “Who knows where a woman begins and ends?” … “I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark.” Moss says that a woman’s power has immense depth, that this power is all-encompassing, ancient and connected to dark fertile grounds. The fertile dark void.