How did this thread turn into a discussion of dragons…? Oh,
davem’s post, I might have known…
Many wonderful and interesting ideas so far, but I wonder if perhaps we are going about this question from the wrong angle. So far, most of the comments have been about how subversive (or not) the
content of M-e may be. The points of
SpM and
Aiwendil, however, move us into a slightly different direction – the subversive decision to “eschew” reality for fantasy in the first place. Seems to me that Le Guin’s principle point was that fantasy provides a ‘way of seeing’ that is in-and-of-itself subversive insofar as it provides a vantage point from outside the ‘norm’ or the expected. I think there’s a lot of this in
davem’s point about dragons as being some kind of untamed or Wild nature – not just in the sense of ‘unclaimed’ or ‘untamed’ nature, but in their raw ability to present Nature as radically other, and alarmingly so. Only in fantasy can we see the natural world as a dragon. Or, rather, only in fantasy is the natural world revealed to be a dragon.
Child raises the interesting example of the environmental emphasis of Tolkien’s work, but to be honest I don’t really see how subversive that aspect may be. Yes,
LotR decries the destruction of the natural world, and even lends the natural world agency with which to fight back – but there does not seem to be a radical overturning of our own world’s attitudes. Nature is still there to be used by people – even if benevolent, the hobbits are still farmers. And even though just and preservative, at the end of the War, the Men of Gondor and Rohan set about extending their dominion and drawing lines upon maps to decide who gets what. Even the characterisation of the Ents seems to re-enforce the hierarchy of people over nature, insofar as the only way that Tolkien can imagine nature fighting back is by becoming more person-like (that is, a man-tree is in control of the real-trees).
Where I think I do see a truly subversive characterisation around the trees is in the early narrative in which we learn of the hobbits’ ‘war’ with the Old Forest. In this tale we see the hobbits acting very much as Saruman will later on, albeit on a smaller scale. But still, there remains within the fabric of the story this disconcerting reminder that even in M-e, nature is subordinate to people: or, rather, that nature is made subordinate to people. This has the fact, I think, of rendering the hobbits – who appear, at first, to be almost idealised versions of our better-selves – just as problematic as we are. In this way, I think the book sets up an idealised vision (hobbits are ‘us’ made better) only to bring that idealised vision into radical doubt (no they’re not) which, in turn, subverts our own experience of fantasy. We come to the book thinking that we are going to be given an escapist jaunt into an idealised version of our own world, when in reality we are being presented with a hard-as-nails reflection of our own petty natures.
I realise it sounds as though I’m being hard on the hobbits – I’m not really: I just think that the hobbits reflect upon us in some very hard ways!