Ursula Le Guin once wrote that the first three Earthsea books were about "what men did". Tehanu is about what women do in the world of Earthsea. Depressingly, it is largely the same as what women do in the real world: they are wives, mothers, and daughters; useful as the bearers of children and the keepers of houses, but nothing more. But Le Guin finds a strength in this. Here, men are defined by their power, but also constrained by that power; and what happens when that power wanes? Women carry on, finding a strange kind of freedom in the roles prescribed to them by men. And Le Guin hints at changes to come, at a shift in the gender relations of Earthsea.