The Dowry of Angyar – by Ursula K. Le Guin

I’m planning to read the whole Hainish Cycle, and despite being perfectly aware that all stories are only very vaguely interconnected and could be read regardless to chronology, I’m still going to follow their publication order because why not.

So let’s talk about The Dowry of Angyar, a short story later republished as Semley’s Necklace, that lays the foundation of what was bound to be a much wider universe.

Synopsys

Semley, an highborn Angyar woman, is married at a young age to another aristocratic family, without bringing any significant dowry due to the impoverished state of her household. Not long after a daughter is born to her, she returns to her family, hoping to retrieve a necklace of mythical beauty that they once possessed. She tracks it down to its original manufacturers, the dwarf-like Gdemiar people, who tell her that they don’t own it anymore, but that they can help her retrieve it, in a journey that “will last only one long night.”

She is taken on board a spaceship to a museum of the League of Worlds, where she meets Rocannon, and is able to have her necklace returned to her. When Semley returns to her husband’s house, she finds that although she only experienced two days of travel, she has been away for nine years by the planet’s calendar, which translates to nearly 20 Earth years. Her husband is now dead, and her daughter a grown woman. In her grief, Semley abandons the necklace and runs into the wilderness.

Analysis

Style – The Dowry of Angyar combines a classically science-fiction setting with a few narrative tropes that are evocative of fantasy and folk myths, and Le Guin’s register varies to suit both circumstances: the author, in fact, adopts a rather technical and modern language when describing the museum and the scholarly observations of its curators, and instead goes for a more old-timey, fable-like prose when talking about Semley’s endeavour. The entire story is told by an omniscent third-person narrator, who for a time gets closer to Rocannon’s limited point of view, but the once again soars higher above the scenery, revealing Semley’s story from a more detached observation point.

Plot Structure – Semley’s story is structured as a typical ‘Quest’ plot-line, with main character going place after place in order to find the MacGuffin that set all events in motion. Her adventure, however, is nested in a very different framework, where the scholars of the League of Worlds are observing her, her planet, her people. This way, a seemingly traditional story becomes a small piece of a much larger universe, of which here we don’t see but a glimpse.

Setting – The Dowry of Angyar is set on a planet of the star Fomalhaut, which harbors multiple intelligent species. The one that the protagonist belongs to is divided in two social castes: social structure which divides individuals into two categories: the Olgyior and Angyar, with the former subordinate to the latter. There are two additional species, the Fiia and the Gdemiar, which are clearly inspired to elves and dwarves respectively.

At the time of the story, the planet has just been reached by the so-called “starlords”, emissaries of the League of Worlds, who have begun to contact the local species and levy taxes when applicable. This way, while we don’t get to see the full extent of the League, we learn that a much larger and technologically advanced interstellar civilisation exists, and that their interests towards other planets are motivated both by ethnological curiosity and by financial interests.

Characters – The main character of the story, Semley, is a prideful impoverished aristocrat from a feudal-like society; despite her central role, we never get to know her very deeply, as the narration treats her more like an ethnological study case than like a fully fledged individual; sure, we can understand her motivations, as well as the impact of her final discovery, however she comes across as a creature of legend, bound to her role and to her destiny. As for the Rocannon, we barely see him in action in this story, although the narrator hints to a greater role he’s supposed to play.

Themes – Semley’s story is a loose retelling of Brísingamen, a Norse myth about the necklace of the goddess Freyja, as well as inspired by other folk tale tropes (see the trope of time moving at different paces when in an otherworldly realm).

As such, it touches upon themes of broken pride, coming across as a rather traditional cautionary tale. What’s more interesting, however, is what the story represents in its new context: by placing such a narration in an an otherwise technologically advanced world, replacing mythical races with evolutionary divergences and magical time dilation with a similar effect caused by space travel , Le Guin shows how all sorts of themes and imagery can in fact belong in science fiction.

In an introduction to the story written for a later anthology, Le Guin said that The Dowry of Angyar was most characteristic of her early science fiction writing, describing it as the most romantic of her works, and saying that she had steadily moved away from explicit romanticism and towards something more complex. Already present is, however, her signature anthropological interest, bound to expand the limits of what was supposed to be science fiction.

Overall Thoughts – The Dowry of Angyar is but a small first scene of the much larger scenery that is the Hainish universe. On its own, it is certainly interesting for its structure and its attempt to break genre convention; I didn’t find myself particularly invested into Semley’s story in itself, however I was very intrigued by what little I could see of the setting, and the story did a great job eliciting my curiosity for what else is to come.