Magda, a Terran raised within Darkovan society, believes that her Terran heritage and off-world education within the ostensibly egalitarian Terran empire has eliminated gender discrimination as an issue within her psyche. Thendara House is Bradley s intense consideration of women and amour, pursued along two parallel threads. Although Thendara House is largely peopled with female characters, it is those characters feelings about, attachments to, and resentments of men that are the driving thematic chords. One plot line involves Jaelle s marriage to a Terran man who, like Magda, was raised on Darkover and is fluent with its culture. Jaelle moves into her husband s world of the Terran compound, and attempts to adjust to the strange, technology dominated lifestyle.
Culture shock is less a problem, however, than the challenges of the marriage relationship.
Even though her husband is a product of what considers itself to be a totally gender neutral culture, gender role expectations and power struggles dominate their domestic landscape. Simultaneously Magda is undergoing her six month confinement to the Renunciate Guildhouse. With benevolent cultural imperialism, she expects that the Free Amazons have nothing to teach her about gender politics and feminism. The emotional perturbation and irrational anger unleashed by the Renunciate training, coupled with her dawning passion for other women and her discomfort with it, is therefore all the more difficult for her. Bradley uses every opportunity in Thendara House to stress that love, most irrational of emotions, is also one of the most difficult to liberate from cultural programming.