she-the-author didn't believe that women were lesser etc etc
You say this, but I could name some female authors who certainly seem to believe that....
In Le Guin's case, you'd really do better to ask someone with a fuller understanding of Le Guin than I have, but my understanding is that her attitudes toward women underwent a sea change over the course of her writing career, so over time the attitudes toward women in the earlier Earthsea books troubled her. In the early books "Weak as women's magic; wicked as women's magic" is presented basically as fact; in the later books, it's something that is widely believed but not a literal truth. It's reminiscent of, say, 19th century doctors running down the skills of midwives in order to professionalize their own trade and fatten their fees. That's the main approach in Tehanu - the book is looking at what women's lives are like in this male-dominated society - and that really worked for me.
Whereas in Tales from Earthsea, writing the founding of Roke with women as some of the key movers and shakers comes perilously close to "I wrote it wrong before," and for me this feels like cheating. Like, she wrote what she wrote, and saying "Oh ACTUALLY Roke was founded as an egalitarian coed school that only later became a boy's club" doesn't cancel out the boy's-club nature of the thing in the fictional present of Earthsea.
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You say this, but I could name some female authors who certainly seem to believe that....
In Le Guin's case, you'd really do better to ask someone with a fuller understanding of Le Guin than I have, but my understanding is that her attitudes toward women underwent a sea change over the course of her writing career, so over time the attitudes toward women in the earlier Earthsea books troubled her. In the early books "Weak as women's magic; wicked as women's magic" is presented basically as fact; in the later books, it's something that is widely believed but not a literal truth. It's reminiscent of, say, 19th century doctors running down the skills of midwives in order to professionalize their own trade and fatten their fees. That's the main approach in Tehanu - the book is looking at what women's lives are like in this male-dominated society - and that really worked for me.
Whereas in Tales from Earthsea, writing the founding of Roke with women as some of the key movers and shakers comes perilously close to "I wrote it wrong before," and for me this feels like cheating. Like, she wrote what she wrote, and saying "Oh ACTUALLY Roke was founded as an egalitarian coed school that only later became a boy's club" doesn't cancel out the boy's-club nature of the thing in the fictional present of Earthsea.