i think there's an interesting trans reading to be made of tenar. not as in "she's literally a trans woman", but as in "her experience of womanhood is deeply relatable from a trans perspective". she makes such a point early in tehanu to mention that she always identified with other women more than they identified with her or counted her as one of their own. in fact, they feared and resented her for the way she was conditionally allowed to wield a fragment of the social power of men. not that she ever understood men- often she's treated like she has failed to be either a woman or a man.
the fact that she could tell this was true even after she left atuan is the reason she left ogion to marry a farmer. she mentions multiple times that she doesn't think she really was a woman in atuan, and she has to be the social equal of the women on gont by living a life like theirs in order to be counted as one of them. this is a kind of transition!
bonus points for how she catches on early that one of the easiest ways to be accepted by gontish women is to play up her own ignorance and let them teach her things she could have figured out herself. it's not until she's lived like this for decades that she can assert her full self and still be viewed as a woman. these are also common experiences of transition
