As is The Tombs of Atuan , Tehanu is written from a female perspective. The novel makes clear that women's magic is as strong as men's, the former being described by the witch Moss as being "deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon". Although it is less concerned with authority and dramatic action than male power, it is equally valuable. Wizards are portrayed as emotionally stunted, arrogant and detached. It is made explicit that wizards lead a life of celibacy to devote all their energy to their magic. These shortcomings are laid bare in Ged after he has lost his power. He is completely at sea and is described by Moss as having the emotions of a fifteen-year-old boy. He does not have the courage to face the King's men to tell them he can no longer be mage, and flees. He relies on Tenar to work out a solution for him, and find somewhere for him to recover his sense of identity. It is only when he acknowledges his feelings for her and enters into a relationship with her that he begins to develop emotionally. Thus although he has lost his power as an archmage, Ged is reborn by deferring to female power, and so discovers his own feelings and the value of simplicity. In so doing he reaches a new maturity and depth to his character, not available to him as Archmage. The dark wizard Aspen is portrayed negatively; his loathing of Tenar is plainly based on hatred and fear of her womanhood.
Le Guin's exploration in her fiction, particularly in Always Coming Home , of gender power issues has grown more overt in the years between the publication of The Farthest Shore in 1972 and Tehanu in 1990. Tehanu revisits the world of Earthsea with this sensibility and explores questions such as why women can't be wizards, why men are seen as superior to women in Earthsea, and what kind of power may be open to women if they are denied the power of wizardry.
Following the Taoist thread running through the first three books and many of Le Guin's other works, a further theme in Tehanu is Ged's transition from a man of doing and action to a man of generally passive being in harmony with his feelings and with nature. This was foreshadowed in the first book of the trilogy, A Wizard of Earthsea , in the contrast between Ged's first teacher Ogion the Silent and Ged himself as a young student, and also in The Farthest Shore, at the end of which the Master Doorkeeper of Roke states of Ged: "He is done with doing: he goes home." This implies that Ged's full maturity lies not in doing but in "going home" to the part of himself that he has yet to embrace.
Magic in general has a much smaller role in Tehanu than in the previous trilogy. The book's text suggests that, to some extent at least, this is prompted by Le Guin's redefinition of the world of Earthsea and the questions she asks about the differences between male and female "power". In other words, the reduced emphasis on magic appears to be not just a difference in the kind of narrative Le Guin decided to tell, but in the actual role she felt that magic (as defined in the earlier trilogy) would play in the future of Earthsea.
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