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Appendix 2: Dragon girls Excerpt from Melanie Rawl's paper on Le Guin's changing relation to dragons: The author of the first three books seems to know the nature of dragons, and it is a nature familiar to us from our western myths, epics and folktales. In these books, dragons are indisputably male. They are powerful, generally antagonistic to humankind and quarrelsome. Yevaud, the dragon of Pendor, guards his hoard along with his eight sons in A Wizard of Earthsea. The dragon of The Farthest Shore is the splendid and heroic Orm Embar, son of the most anciently famous dragon of the realm, Orm, who died at the hands of the hero Erreth-Akbe, killing as he was killed. Bridging the first three and the last three books is the enigmatic dragon Kalessin, the Eldest, whose sex in unknown and who is always referred to by the pronoun "it." The latter three books, however, demonstrate how much the earlier author does not know about dragons. The dragons of the last three books are female: the Woman of Kemay, Tehanu, Orm Irian. They are also revealed to be descended from creatures who were, at one time, both human and dragon, as Tenar and Seserahk appear to be. These dragons are not interested in hoards or riddling contests with mages. Freedom is what they seek, freedom from the spells and oppressive influence of men. The last three books reveal that the power of A Wizard, Atuan, and Shore is the kind of power sought chiefly by men. It cannot be understood as a generic type of power sought by both sexes. Writes Le Guin: The fourth book, Tehanu, takes up where the trilogy left off, in the same hierarchic, male-dominated society; but now, instead of using the pseudo-genderless male viewpoint of the heroic tradition, the world is seen through a woman's eyes. This time the gendering of the point of view is neither hidden nor denied. (Earthsea Revisioned 12) Power and heroics shift from men to women in Tehanu, Tales and Wind. Typical of Le Guin, however, is that the shift is not a simple reversal. Men remain important, even heroic, players in Tehanu, Tales of Earthsea and The Other Wind. Their heroics, however, are performed in conjunction with women or within the structure of values practiced by and associated with women: finding, mending, binding, healing. The texts move from masculine hierarchy to feminine web, from the tower to the house. The meek have inherited Earthsea, but they are dragons and therefore not meek: they are women who speak and act from their own values and perspective. Rawls Melanie 2008 Witches, Wives and Dragons: the evolution of the women in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, Mythlore Spring-Summer 2008