11) ‘Mountain Ways’ by Ursula K. Le Guin
On the planet O, the marriage unit – known as a sedoretu – is a foursome, two men and two women. Each sedoretu contains within itself four interweaving partnerships and two forbidden partnerships. Marriage is important within Ki’O society, not just for reasons of love and companionship but for the successful maintenance of communities and livelihoods. Like any form of marriage, the sedoretu can have its problems…
‘Mountain Ways’ occupies similar ground to the Lucy Sussex story, even down to its highland/lowland dynamic. It is true that marriage on O seems an altogether more open, free and equitable arrangement than the male-dominated and often unhappy power relationships we see in Sussex’s world of the Crash, and what interested me most about ‘Mountain Ways’ was the portrayal of societal equality between genders. In her novel Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie showed how the use of a single pronoun might realign perceptions around gender; in ‘Mountain Ways’, Le Guin manages to achieve a similar effect simply by ‘writing equal’ and it’s masterfully done. More of this in SFF, please!
I happened to enjoy ‘Mountain Ways’ more than I enjoyed ‘The Queen of Erewhon’ – the sense of place seemed more richly abundant, and I was more heavily invested in the characters. I liked the ambience generally. Le Guin’s writing is, as ever, elegant and concise and quietly poetic:
After her meditation and reading, Enno would come out and find Shahes on the great slopes where the yearlings still ran with their dams and the new-borns. Together the two women could fill a forty-pound sack a day with the airy, silky, milk-coloured clouds of combings. Often they would pick out a pair of twins, of which there had been an unusual number this mild year. If Shahes led out one twin the other would follow it, as yama twins will do all their lives; and so the women would work side by side, in a silent, absorbed companionship. They talked only to the animals.