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Gender and solitude in Ursula K. Le Guin's Solitude -- a short story review

Solitude explores society on the planet named Eleven-Soro where people live most of their lives in solitude. Observers attempt to research the society on this planet, but are initially unsuccessful, first attempting with a group of men who are chased away and have stones thrown at them, then by integrating a woman into an auntring (small “village” of mothers and children who live in relative proximity) where she is unsuccessful at having conversations with the adults but is successful by talking to the children. Soon after, the mothers teach their children to stop talking to her. They finally become successful in their research by integrating Leaf and her two children Serenity and Borny into an auntring. The children are able to grow up and become themselves part of the community, which is structured by mothers teaching their children through song-stories. The children participate in the singing circles, where mothers and the older women share their knowledge, and learn how to make their “souls” which could be compared to a right of passage into adulthood. Eventually, Leaf decides to return to the ship with her two children having concluded her research.

Ursula K. Le Guin shares that “Science Fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive” in the author’s note to her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, where she expresses her belief that science fiction isn’t about predicting the future, but about looking and interpreting the world we live in. I do agree with this description and feels like it applies well to this story as an exploration of the way society often judges and criticizes introverts. Ursula shares that she wrote Solitude because she wanted to write a story about an introvert who found a good place to live, on another planet, because our planet is overflowing with extroverts who don’t have enough time to even think about silence or introverts. In The Unreal and the Real: the selected short stories of Ursula K. Le Guin , where I read this short story, Le Guin also writes that “There are dozens of definitions of what ‘science fiction’ is; few are useful, and none is definitive” and with this I agree. You can often identify science fiction with common tropes or elements used in the storytelling, like other worlds, alien races or cultures, technology and science, but it is up to us to identify what is the real and what is the unreal in our fiction.

In this piece of short-fiction, gender is explored as a major theme. Though the planet Soro has a different societal and gender structure than what we are familiar with I believe that it still explores our own gender structures and norms. On Soro, women settle into auntrings to have children, a loose village of other women, mothers and children. The children learn and are taught to observe the world by their aunts and mothers. Once the boys begin puberty, they leave the auntring to join a boygroup, where they will learn to be men. After surviving the boygroup, the men can choose to pair up and live together, or they can settle in the surroundings of an auntring, if they are not pushed out by the other men. Most men live their lives in almost complete solitude. A woman may also choose to leave the auntring to go “scouting”, which is a journey of self-discovery done in solitude. Solitude presents its society as matriarchal, similar to an elephant society, where the women live in community and the men are pushed to solitude when they reach adulthood. It explores gender in a few interesting ways to me. For example, in our society today I think we are seeing a big rise in loneliness, what some are calling a “loneliness epidemic”, among youth and particularly young men. Some have speculated that the Covid-19 pandemic may have stunted social skills in young people, or that social media is isolating its users from real world connections, or even the disappearance of “third places” making it harder to meet people and develop relationships. Whatever it may be, it is true that many young people feel extremely lonely and isolated in today’s world. I think a lot of people feel like they have failed socially, because they grow up with movies about high school students partying and participating in cliques or groups, and this also bleeds into our expectations for college and adult life.

We are told all our lives that to be successful we need to be constantly social, making new connections and friends who will help us reach our goals. I think this makes a lot of people forget about small connections, quiet community and finding people like you. So, that is why I think in this story that the observers and researchers of the society on Soro describe it as a “failed” or “broken” society. They believe that society is fundamentally about being social and cannot understand how community is formed on Eleven-Soro. When Leaf returns to the ship orbiting the planet with her children, she in upset with Serenity for failing to conform to her “proper” society and to become a “real” woman. Ren knows that her soul belongs to Soro, and that if she leaves to join her mother and brother her soul will die. On the ship she does develop one relationship with Arrem, a biologist, who is described as “not a man, yet not a woman; and so not exactly an adult, yet not a child: a person, alone, like me.” by Serenity. Arrem is also excluded from the norms of the society that her mother wishes her to conform. They are able to share experiences together, and learn from each other. At the end, Ren’s mother comes to understand her daughter and lets her return home and grow up as a person.

Thank you for reading,
this review was originally written for my Science Fiction general elective class.