Semley's Necklace

 The story "Semley's Necklace" was first published in 1964 under the name "Dowry of the Angyar" in the magazine Amazing Stories. It was republished as the prologue to her first novel Rocannon's World in 1966, and then again as a standalone story under the current name in The Wind's Twelve Quarters. In the introduction to that collection, she calls it her most characteristic early story.

The story opens with an anthropological report on the world of Fomalhaut II and its inhabitants, referred to as HILFs -- High Intelligence Life Forms -- written by representatives of the spacefaring Hainish people. There are three of these -- the subterranean dwarflike Gdemiar, the elfin or fairylike Fiia, and the humanlike Liuar. The story focuses on a woman named Semley, from the ruling Angyar race of the Liuar. She has married another Angyar nobleman, but neither of them brought much wealth to the marriage. So she leaves the palace in hopes of recovering the Eye of the Sea, a valuable blue jewel set in a golden necklace that had been an heirloom of her family before it was lost several generations ago. Her father is unable to help her, as are the flighty and innocent Fiia. So she approaches the Gdemiar, who made the necklace originally and thus had a motive to steal it. After some negotiation, the Gdemiar agree to take Semley to the necklace's current location. As it turns out, while the Liuar were just being charged taxes by the Hainish, the Gdemiar had been selected to receieve advanced industrial and scientific knowledge, including the operation of a near-lightspeed ship. The Gdemiar take Semley to the world of New South Georgia, where they meet the anthropologist Rocannon at the museum. The Eye of the Sea is on display at the museum, but Rocannon agrees to return it to Semley. She goes back to her home with it. But when she gets there, she finds that due to relativistic time dilation, nearly two decades have passed. Her husband was killed years ago in battle, and her daughter has grown to adulthood without her. She has the necklace, but her whole reason for obtaining it is now gone. She discards it, and flees from the palace.

A few notes on the story's location. Fomalhaut is a real star, in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fish. The name comes from the Arabic Fom al-Haut, meaning mouth of the whale. It is one of the brightest stars in the sky, and has been used by many cultures for navigation and timekeeping. Le Guin's planet Fomalhaut II is entirely invented, but decades after publication, astronomers confirmed the existence of several debris rings around the star, of the type that we expect to consolidate eventually into planets. In 2008, the first ever exoplanet to be imaged with visible light was spotted around Fomalhaut by the Hubble Space Telescope. This planet was officially designated Fomalhaut b (Fomalhaut a being the star itself), and given the common name Dagon, an ancient Semitic deity often represented as half-fish. Dagon is at least as large as Neptune and possibly larger than Jupiter, so it's not a great match for Le Guin's invented world, but there may be more planets waiting to be discovered in the Fomalhaut system.

This story is the first that is set in Le Guin's largest and longest-standing imaginary world, the Hainish universe. We need to put an asterisk on the concept of the "Hainish universe," however. With something like the Earthsea books, Le Guin worked to maintain internal consistency of worldbuilding -- even when she later came to dislike elements, such as the all-male College of Wizards. But in her Hainish works, she did not worry about consistecy. The various stories and novels share ideas, themes, and references, but she will happily drop or ignore things that don't suit the present story without trying to explain or retcon the inconsistency. As she says in the introduction to the Library of America collection, "I flinch when they're called 'The Hainish Cycle' or any such term that implies they are set in a coherent fictional universe with a well-planned history, because they aren't, it isn't, it hasn't. I'd rather admit its inconsistencies than pretend it's a respectable Future History."

The Hainish Cycle, if we can be forgiven for calling it that, is tied together by the idea that all of the intelligent humanoid species throughout the universe, including earthlings, are descended from the people of a world called Hain. The Hainish planted colonies throughout the universe, sometimes genetically modifying their inhabitants, but then lost touch. The Hainish stories are set during a second era in which Hain re-establishes contact with these dispersed worlds, most of which have forgotten their extraterrestrial origins. This shared origin provides an explanation for why the inhabitants of these various planets are all more or less humanoid in both appearance and psychology. Each world can be a laboratory -- sometimes quite literally -- for Le Guin to examine situations and societies made up of human characters.

I talked in an earlier episode about Le Guin's later discomfort with the way this story blends science fiction and fantasy elements. In her essay "A Citizen of Mondath," she described her early works like this as "fairy tales decked out in space suits." That's literally true here, as this story is an adaptation of a Norse myth using space travel. But at the same time, I think she's too hard on herself, and this story does some interesting things by aiming at that intersection of fantasy and sci-fi elements.

In the introductory passage, she asks "how can you tell fact from legend, truth from truth?" This is worth unpacking. On the surface, this story is based on a familiar science fiction trope -- the scientific explanation of myth or magic. Practically every other episode of Doctor Who, for example, is based on this trope, with aliens and timey-wimey science used to explain a mythological event or belief. Le Guin has taken a mythic story, specifically the story of Brísingamen or Freya's Necklace from the Eddas, and given it a scientific justification. Freya/Semley's inability to return to her family after recovering the necklace is the result of the time dilation she experiences traveling at near light speed to and from the museum where it was held. The theory of relativity explains that time slows down the faster you're moving, so people on a space ship going close to the speed of light might only experience the passage of a few days while years go by for people on the ground. This element of relativistic time dilation will come up repeatedly in the Hainish works. It's one of the series' favorite elements of what I called presumed technology. Le Guin doesn't explain how her characters travel close to the speed of light, but she's very interested in the kinds of situations that it can put people into, like Semley returning to find her husband long dead and her daughter grown up when she thought she was just gone for a brief time.

The original Brísingamen story must be recomposed from fragments scattered in the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, and the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason. The goddess Freya has a beautiful necklace called Brísingamen, meaning either the necklace of fire or the necklace of the Brisings, an ethnic or family name. She obtained it from four dwarves by spending a night with each of them. It is then stolen from her by Loki. In the Prose Edda, she enlists Heimdall to help her recover it, and he and Loki battle after transforming into seals. In the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, she goes to Odin, who tells her it will be returned if she uses her magic to make two kings, Högni and Heðinn, battle. The kings' warriors come back to life as soon as they are slain until a Christian king, the titular Olaf Tryggvason, comes along and is able to kill them permanently.

The fragments leave lots of questions unanswered, but plenty of modern writers have produced harmonized, fleshed-out versions. One that Le Guin was familiar with was from Padraic Colum's children's book The Children of Odin from 1920. In Colum's telling, Freya wants to obtain a treasure from three giant women who have been banished from Asgard. Against the wishes of her husband Odur, she goes searching for the giants. She consults some elves who can't help her, then finds some dwarves who agree to guide her to the giants if she spends the night with them. One of the giants gives her a spectacular necklace. But on arriving home, she finds that Odur has abandoned her, and nobody can locate him. She spends years searching for him, during which her daughter Hnossa grows up. She continues wearing the necklace out of sadness and as a mark of her wrongdoing.

We can easily see how Le Guin has adapted Colum's version of the story. Like Freya, Semley goes seeking a treasure, and visits the unhelpful elf-like Fiia before gaining help at a cost from the dwarflike Gdemiar. In Norse myth, Freya traveled in a chariot pulled by huge cats, while Semley travels on the back of a kind of giant flying cat called a windsteed. But Le Guin's ending is more poignant -- Colum offers no real explanation for why Odur has disappeared, and Freya has only herself to blame for spending so much time searching that she missed her daughter's childhood. For Semley, the loss of her loved ones is the inevitable cost of choosing to go to New South Georgia to retrieve the necklace, because of the time required to travel there and back.

So much for telling fact from legend. But in the passage I quoted earlier, she also asks about telling truth from truth. This points us beyond the "god was actually an alien" trope from those Doctor Who episodes (and I should mention before I get any hate mail that I'm actually a huge Doctor Who fan, so if you want to get mad at me for my Doctor Who opinions, you can focus on the fact that David Tennant is my least favorite of the new Doctors). The expression "truth from truth" tells us that while we may try to create a rational explanation for legends, there is still truth of its own kind in them.

The story opens in layers. We get an unnamed meta-narrator's speculation on legends and truth, then a snippet of Rocannon's perspective when Semley arrives at the museum. He ends by saying to the curator "I wish there were some way of knowing who she is ..." In other words, Semley the person can't be explained by any rationalistic history of Hainish-Fomalhaut contact, or clarified by dispelling legends. She simply is. And so for the bulk of the story, we find ourselves in Semley's point of view, seeing the Hainish through her cultural perspective. What the necklace and its recovery mean to her are as important as any reports that Rocannon or the curator could consult.

It's worth looking at the two names under which this story has gone. The original name was "Dowry of the Angyar," then it later took the name "Semley's Necklace." I haven't been able to find much about who came up with the titles or why, beyond the implication that "Semley's Necklace" is Le Guin's preferred title since that's what it's called in her own collection. So I'll try to be careful about speculating on motives, and just look at how the two titles frame the story differently.

A dowry is a body of money or other wealth that a bride's family provides to the newly married household. It's easy to criticize dowries from a feminist point of view -- you have parents of daughters being forced to pay a bunch of money in order to get her married off into another family. And dowries can produce a bias against daughters. In parts of India, for example, rising expectations for dowries have been blamed for sex-selective abortions that have skewed the gender ratio of children being born, since parents don't want the expense of a daughter's dowry. On the other hand, a dowry usually remains the property of the wife. So it provides a kind of security for her, since she'll keep it if there is a divorce. A dowry can have the effect of supporting women's independence in a society that gives them few other options to support themselves economically.

But Semley's necklace isn't quite a traditional dowry. She and her husband are already married when she decides to go looking for it. It's not a necessary precondition for the wedding, so it seems the Angyar don't practice a strict dowry system. Semley is simply concerned that the lack of wealth brought to the marriage by either partner inhibits their ability to fully take on their roles as members of the ruling class. She can be read on the one hand as a stereotypical materialistic woman, or on the other as a woman trying to survive within a hierarchical and patriarchal social system. It's an interesting case, to be sure, for Le Guin's first major female protagonist.

Calling the story "The Dowry of the Angyar" draws attention to the social system. It emphasizes the need for a dowry as Semley's motivation. And it gives attention to the impact on the family -- for whom the dowry is provided -- at the end. Semley views the neckace as useless for its role as a dowry, and so she throws it to the floor of the palace. But in so doing, she leaves it to her daughter. Semley was deprived of her dowry by her drunken, irresponsible father's loss of the necklace. Now her daughter will have it as a dowry, but at the cost of losing her mother.

Retitling the story "Semley's Necklace" puts the focus on Semley as a character. We're invited to focus on her motivations as a character, and her experiences of losing time while traveling to achieve her quest. At the end of "The Dowry of the Angyar," the reader's eyes stay on the necklace on the floor of the Angyar palace. At the end of "Semley's Necklace," the reader's eyes follow Semley off into the forest.

Semley is the protagonist of the story, but she is not the narrator. This is a story told through the eyes of an anthropologist, as many of Le Guin's works were -- an obvious influence from her father's career. But it's worth noting that the anthropology involved is bad anthropology, albeit not totally unusual by the standards of the academic discipline during Le Guin's youth.

Anthropology during the late 19th and early 20th century was wrapped up in the European colonial enterprise. Of course, debates about complicity in neo-colonialism continue today in the discipline even as many of the fiercest critics of colonialism are trained, and work, as anthropologists. A common framework for this early anthropology was cultural evolution. The idea was that there were a consistent set of stages through which societies move as they advance, and naturally white European and North American societies were considered the most advanced. The influence of these evolutionary systems remains embedded in our way of talking about history and cultural difference. We have things like the idea of the agricultural revolution as a forward step, or the progression from animism to polytheism to monotheism, or the hierarchy of the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron age.

To be very clear: anthropologists today would, rightly, reject this kind of evolutionary stage model of cultural development. There is no single trajectory of cultural change, and cultures can't be ranked as more or less "advanced" than others. But it's a longstanding idea within Western culture, which serves to justify colonialism. We can see that justification happening within the story of "Semley's Necklace." And I think in her later Hainish books, we will see Le Guin critique this aspect of her own earlier writing.

The ethnological summary that opens the story sets the tone. The intelligent species of Fomalhaut II are being ranked on a developmental trajectory so that the Hainish can determine how useful they are for being conscripted into the preparations for a galactic war. This impending war provides the rationale for intervening in the cultures of some worlds -- no Star Trek Prime Directive here -- to advance them into allies or production centers for the League of Worlds. The Angyar resent the tax imposed on them by the people they call Starlords, meant to finance a "war that was to be fought with some strange enemy, somewhere in the hollow places between the stars, at the end of years." The Gdemiar are being taught new technology that will industrialize their society and increase their productivity. Only the Fiia are left out, viewed as unable to contribute to the Hainish coffers -- "currently untaxable."

Later on we meet the anthropologist Rocannon. He is presented as a sympathetic character. He corrects the museum curator's use of the derogatory "trog," short for troglodyte, to refer to the Gdemiar. He is willing to return the necklace to Semley with nothing in exchange. That's a step that many colonial museums, such as the British Museum, refuse to do even fifty years after the publication of this story. Yet Rocannon is still part of the Hainish colonial apparatus. He works at the New South Georgia museum with all of these artifacts obtained under questionable circumstances from other worlds. He calls himself a "hilfer," aligning his perspective with the cultural evolutionist scheme I've been critiquing.

It's hard not to read Rocannon as a parallel to Le Guin's father, Alfred Kroeber. Like Kroeber, he's friendly and sympathetic toward the people he studies, regarding himself as in some way their ally. Yet he also maintains a museum full of their artifacts and sets himself up as the authority on their cultural development. We'll have occasion to talk later in the series about Kroeber's legacy and the critique of him that grew to the point that his name was removed from the anthopology building at Berkeley. We'll also talk about how Le Guin's views of her father's legacy changed over the course of her life. But at this point in her career, Le Guin seems to regard him as a positive model for her character.

One line of the story packs in a lot of worldbuilding about the three main societies of Fomalhaut II, and their relationship to ideas of cultural evolution. As they are negotiating about transporting Semley to New South Georgia, the spokesman for the Gdemiar says "The Angyar take; the Fiia give; the Gdemiar give and take." These short phrases encapsulate three different ideal types of economic models.

The Fiia give. There is a longstanding idea in Western historical and anthropological thought that says that human societies began in a state of paradise, in which everything was provided and so there would be no need to be stingy in what you give to others. A major source of this idea is, of course, the story of the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis. Adam and Eve live lives without worry, or care, or needs -- they don't even need clothing. The Garden provides everything they could want, so long as they obey one rule. Having broken that rule, this original state of paradise is now lost to humanity, and life requires constant toil and hardship. Only very recently have advances in economics and technology opened up the promise of overcoming this state of poverty and suffering.

Secular versions of this story exist as well. Marx and Engels, for example, developed the concept of "primitive communism" as the original state of humankind. In this state, everything was shared freely among all. Thus the various modes of production through which human societies advance in the Marxist historical scheme are really just a spiraling back to a new, more advanced form of communism built on industrial productivity.

As Europeans colonized the rest of the world starting in the 1500s, they used this idea of an original paradise as a lens to interpret the societies they encountered. This produced the stereotype of the "noble savage," a society free of worry and oppression, where valuable goods and sexual favors are bestowed upon visitors with no thought about recompense.

As problematic as the noble savage stereotype is, there is a tiny grain of truth to it. We can see that grain blossom properly through the writings of contemporary indigenous authors. These authors describe indigenous societies as operating within an economy and ecology of abundance. Capitalism and colonialism are driven by ideas of scarcity, of needing to compete and conquer to obtain more and more. But indigenous attitudes to the land often viewed it as a place of freely-given abundance. If you have reasonable needs, a deep knowledge of the land, and a relationship based on care and reciprocity, you need not worry about scarcity.

Societies of abundance could be a source of consternation to colonial rulers. Members of these societies may engage with the colonial economy if it suits them, but then pop off to the forest if they don't like the deal they're getting. And so they lack motivation to work in ways that generate profits for colonial enterprises. Those colonial enterprises then enslaved indigenous people to make them work, or destroyed their land so that they had no choice but to work, or gave up on them and tried to exterminate them. Luckily for the Fiia, the Hainish seem at the time of the story to be satisfied for now with what they can extract from the Gdemiar and Angyar.

The Angyar take. Angyar society is built on a hierarchical, tribute-based model. Each level of the hierarchy demands support from those below it. Evolutionary models of culture emphasize the role of this kind of tributary economy in early states and ancient empires like Egypt or Rome, as well as feudal societies, but it exists in various forms up through the present, even in the heartland of capitalism.

In the Angyar case, it is easy enough for the Hainish to impose a tax on them. They may not like having to pay it, but they can easily understand it as a case of having been subjugated by a higher level of the hierarchy, made into vassals of Hain while maintaining their own vassals on the planet. Semley, coming from the uppermost strata of Angyar society, fundamentally approaches the world from this mindset. As she seeks the necklace, she regards herself as an authority figure who others should serve and obey. She struggles to make headway with the Gdemiar because they don't recognize her authority. When asked what she will pay in return for the trip to fetch her necklace, the only thing Semley can think of to offer is her thanks.

The Gdemiar give and take. Here we have a society based on trade and exchange, on quid pro quo. The hyper individualism of modern capitalism is somewhat abated by the fact that the Gdemiar, like the Fiia, have a kind of collective telepathy. But they are clear that, unlike the other species on the planet, they will neither give nor take without compensation.

The Gdemiar's penchant for exchange turns out to be exactly how the necklace made it to New South Georgia. The curator looks up the item in the catalog and reports that the museum received it from the Gdemiar in exchange for their space ship. He calls them "bargain-obsessed," reflecting some disdain by the more hierarchical Hainish for the Gdemiar's insistence on treating the spaceship as a purchase (for which they gave equal value) rather than a favor (which would put them in a subservient role).

That the industrializing proto-capitalist society of Fomalhaut II is the one that lives in caves and specializes in mining is not surprising. As Carolyn Merchant argues in her book Reinventing Eden, mining does not come easily to societies who hold caring relationships with the land. Large-scale mining seems to wound the earth, taking from it what can't be replaced. Mining requires a shift of mindset, to view the earth as an inert object that can be exploited. A society based on trade and exchange requires a pool of resources, of ownable things that can be exchanged by people for people's own reasons, without intrinsic value.

Another useful perspective comes from Elizabeth Carolyn Miller's book Extraction Ecologies. You can hear an interview I did with her on the New Books in Geography podcast. She looks at how mining is presented in English literature from the 1830s to the 1930s, so a little before Le Guin wrote "Semley's Necklace," but I think many of her ideas translate over well. She argues that an economy based on extraction of non-renewable resources speeds up our sense of time while adding uncertainty to the future. Mineral wealth enables society to do more and change faster, but there is the ever present threat of running out of this nonrenewable resource.

And that is exactly what is happening to Semley. She aims to recover an heirloom of her family, an artifact associated with timelessness and continuity with the past. But she's forced into contact with the industrializing Gdemiar and their spacefaring partners the Hainish. Her life is literally sped up, passing decades in what seems like just days as the ship made of mined metals whisks her to New South Georgia and back. And the threat of uncertainty and unsustainability come down hard when she returns and finds her husband long dead and her child grown up.

It's notable that after her long encounter with two industrialized societies, Semley ends the story by running off into the woods. Finding her home irrevocably changed, she no longer wants the necklace. She throws it to the ground, rejecting her place in Angyar society, and flees the palace. She is described as "like some wild thing." I don't want to push too hard on this one sentence, but it's a good reminder to pay attention to the landscapes of Fomalhaut II as we move forward into the novel Rocannon's World.

Speaking of which, you should join me next time when we'll be looking at the first two chapters of Le Guin's first book. There are nine chapters in all, so I'm expecting to spend four episodes working our way through Rocannon's World.

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