On page 56, LeGuin has the protagonist, Tenar, talking to an old witch named Moss, who has remained unmarried throughout her life, though not celibate.
"What's wrong with men?" Tenar inquired. ... Moss replied, "I don't know my dearie. I've thought on it. Often I've thought on it. The best I can say it is like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell ... It's hard and strong, that shell, and its all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, manself. And that's all. That's all there is. It's all him and nothing else inside."What are we to make of this? I am a family therapist and much of my work over the last twenty years has been working with single parent mothers and their troubled children. We know that single mothers very often have problems with children, that has been well documented over the past ten years. Some of the problem is financial, perhaps related to abuse somewhere along the line, personality problems, but my job is to train the parent and the child so that behavior improves. I have done a lot of thinking about the problems of mothers with children.Tenar ... asked, "But if he's a wizard-" "Then it's all his power inside. His power's himself, see. That's how it is with him. And that's all. When his power goes, he's gone. Empty. ... Nothing."
And a woman then?"
"Oh, well, dearie, a woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen, mistress, I have roots. I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark."
LeGuin is talking in stereotypes, for the land her characters inhabit is a troubled land. When trouble strikes, the genders tend to move towards the extremes. Males are required to become militaristic to defend home and Country and the women are required to reflect traditional female behaviors, as in Iran the last few years. I don't know where the causality lies. Perhaps males are effected first and demand corresponding, supportive behavior from women? But LeGuin's description of men as being surrounded by a hard shell is accurate as far as it goes and the comparison of women as being boundless is also accurate. It can be applied to parenting.
I cannot tell you how many times mothers have said to me, "I tell them to do something and they ignore me. Their fathers says a word and they hop to." I find it fairly easy to teach a mother to get kids to obey ... she has to develop that walnut shell that LeGuin speaks of. She has to decide that the kids will obey or she will force the issue. Too many mothers think that their role is to be nice all the time, to be loving and always accepting, never rejecting, boundless, timeless and deep, like Moss' description.
LeGuin's female characters were loving, but they also had a bit of the hard edge. LeGuin doesn't notice that because she is a mature woman, and strength goes with maturity, but it is difficult to see apart from the models or stereotypes of our culture. Her female characters are wonderful, but she has some difficulty defining strong, caring, but not macho males. She is good at delineating pure threat, as with a dragon in this story, or violent renegade males, but the only three good males in the story are, 1. very young, 2. very old, 3. burned out.
Fathers tend to be more task-oriented and if they want the room cleaned, then it will be cleaned. Children learn quickly whether they will have to obey or not, in the same way an employee learns very quickly how much they will have to heed a new supervisor.
Children quickly learn that a soft, doormat-type mother does not care how they behave, that she will accept and love them anyway, so if she does not have any hard edges, then they can get away with doing nothing. Boys, when raised by weak mothers, can be easily identified, because they seem spoiled, soft, weak, do not rise to a challenge, do not set goals nor work toward them. Father's role is to approve of children when they do what is expected of them, and disapprove when they do not. Fathers traditional role is to prepare children for entry into the adult world. Mothers with out-of-control children usually have to learn to lay out expectations and enforce them.
Father's approval role sets out standards by which everything else can be judged, like grades in school or work evaluations. Without standards, everything becomes OK and effort is not required.
Parents can go wrong. Love without discipline and standards is as wrong as discipline without love. Both parents need to be able to express both aspects of parenting and work with the other. It is difficult for one person to be everything and much better when there is a mature partner to work off of, take over when necessary, balance and trade roles with and who will tell you when you get out of line.
The male role has had much of the soldier in it ever since humans quit the hunter-gatherer life style, became farmers and had stuff that was worth taking, thus needing defending. But women on the frontier had to be able to be tough also. A person has to be pretty protected to be as soft as women of the 1950's - our mothers - were encouraged to be. And since it is men who had to do the protecting, men developed an exceedingly hard shell. Several wars, a Depression and the militarization of our culture had a lot to do with it also.
Women need to learn strength to go with their love and men softness to go with their strength. Then perhaps we will not be so far apart.
Paul Shaner is an MSW practicing in Washington state.