A Left-Handed Commencement Address: Main Idea
A Left-Handed Commencement Address: Main Idea
This speech is basically a rallying cry given to women to stand up and claim their righteous place in American society. But unlike other rallying cries we're used to hearing (say, "Give me liberty or give me death!"), it's given in a nurturing, inspiring tone.
It's like she's just gently reminding the graduates that it's time to seize the day and to embrace the "other" side of society—the side that has been relegated to women because men are either too scared or unable to acknowledge it—and by embracing it, finally achieving equality with their male counterparts.
After all, according to Le Guin, our future lies with women. (Who's betting that Le Guin owns at least one "The Future Is Female " shirt?)
Questions
- Why does Le Guin say that public speaking is done in the language of men? Is this true in 1983, or even today?
- How does she define success in male terms? Is it different for men and women?
- What is the female side of life? Do you agree?
Chew On This
Le Guin thinks women are better than men, and that's why they need to step up.
Le Guin thinks that society needs a better balance between the male and female strengths, but one is not necessarily better than the other.
Quotes
Quote #1
Intellectual tradition is male. Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's language. (6-7)
Why is it such a problem that society has, according to Le Guin, normalized male (and not female) patterns of speech? Can you give an example of how this is true from other notable speakers in the late 1970s/early 1980s?
Quote #2
Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. (28-29)
When Le Guin says "ourselves," is she referring to women? Americans? What do you think? Does this statement remind you of anyone else in the political arena?
Quote #3
In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and take responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean – the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. […] If there is a day side to it […] we're never going to get there by imitating Machoman. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country. (56, 60-62)
She sure makes being a woman sound like a blast, doesn't she? But even if she's taking a pessimistic view, this statement contains a ton of optimism in terms of where we can go as a society. She speaks of gaining inner strength and fortitude in struggles to obtain a better, brighter future, which sounds pretty positive to us.
Quote #4
So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives. That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own. (63-64)
Calling women "consenting captives of a psychopathic social system" is a pretty strong assertion. Perhaps it was the death of the Equal Rights Act that made her so irate, or maybe she just liked the alliteration of the phrase.
Quote #5
What hope we have lies there. […] Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
We think Le Guin's choice of language in this sentence is pretty subversive. Typically, living things need light to grow, but she's asserting that human souls grow in darkness. Having already made allusions to the fact that the dark is a metaphor for feminine strengths, she's kind of saying that women are closer to having human souls than men are, who have been nurtured in the light.