Contemporary critical discourse has called into question most of the assumptions of earlier moralist critics, but not the disapproval with which "escape", and "escapist fantasy" in particular, were regarded. Skilled analysts such as Rosemary Jackson and polemicists such as Christine Brook-Rose seem equally unsure about the concept of "escape" and the justification or otherwise of its pejorative loading. Tolkien's positive use of the term seems as exasperating as illuminating (Tolkien 3–83). This essay investigates two books with a female protagonist from the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin (whom few regard as an ethically evasive writer) in an attempt to rehabilitate "escape" as a laudable narrative movement and ethical choice.