Women in The Lord of the Rings
The roles of women in The Lord of the Rings have often been assessed as insignificant, or important only in relation to male characters in a story about men for boys. Meanwhile, other commentators have noted the empowerment of the three major women characters, Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen, and provided in-depth analysis of their roles within the narrative of The Lord of the Rings.
Weronika Łaszkiewicz has written that "Tolkien's heroines have been both praised and severely criticized",[2] and that his fictional women have an ambiguous image, of "both passivity and empowerment".[2] J. R. R. Tolkien spent much of his life in an all-male environment, and had conservative views about women, prompting discussion of possible sexism. Much of the action in The Lord of the Rings is by male characters, and the nine-person Fellowship of the Ring is entirely male.
On the other hand, commentators have noted that the
Tolkien's background
The author of the bestselling fantasy novel
Among
As seen in a letter to his son
Roles for women
A story about men for boys
The Lord of the Rings has repeatedly been discussed as being a story about men for boys, with no significant women characters;[1][9] there are 11 women in the work, some of them mentioned only briefly.[2] Catherine Stimpson, a scholar of English and feminism, wrote that Tolkien's women were "hackneyed ... stereotypes ... either beautiful and distant, simply distant, or simply simple".[10]
Robert Butler and John Eberhard, in the
The critics Candice Fredrick and Sam McBride, referencing the all-male Inklings group, wrote that "Middle-earth is very Inkling-like, in that while women exist in the world, they need not be given significant attention and can, if one is lucky, simply be avoided altogether."
Few but powerful women
The Tolkien scholars Carol Leibiger, in the
The
The scholar of English literature Nancy Enright stated that the few female characters in The Lord of the Rings are extremely important in defining power, which she suggests is a central theme of the novel. She commented that even the apparently heroic male figures such as Aragorn and Faramir "use traditional masculine power in a manner tempered with an awareness of its limitations and a respect for another, deeper kind of power".[15] She argued that Faramir's brother Boromir, who fits the picture of the powerful male warrior hero, is in fact "weaker morally and spiritually"[15] than those
who exercise the deeper kind of power, and noted that Boromir falls while the "less typically heroic characters",
Weronika Łaszkiewicz noted that "Tolkien's heroines have been both praised and severely criticized",[2] stating that his fictional women have an ambiguous image, of "both passivity and empowerment".[2] She suggested that this could be a result of his personal experience. Firstly, women in early 20th century England normally stayed at home and looked after the children, she noted, and Tolkien expected as much of his wife Edith, even though she was a skilful pianist. Secondly, his environment was overwhelmingly male, and other Inklings, especially Lewis, believed that "full intimacy with another man was impossible unless women were totally excluded" from their intellectual and artistic discussions; Łaszkiewicz notes that Edith resented the Inklings meetings.[2][16]
The scholar of humanities
A diverse roster
The female hobbit characters in The Lord of the Rings all have limited roles.
Leslie A. Donovan writes that because there are rather few women in the book, feminist commentators such as Lisa Hopkins have argued that the scarce women are strong, authoritative, and disproportionately important to the narrative. Donovan calls this "the Valkyrie reflex", and argues against it, not least with the hobbit women. Lobelia "may be valkyrie-like, but her greediness and covetousness early in the texts are not common valkyrie traits", while "Rosie Cotton's teasing of Sam" is at best "vaguely reminiscent" of a valkyrie inciter, but "her wholesome ordinariness has no relationship to Odin's battle goddesses".[21]
Ann Basso wrote in Mythlore that all the women in The Lord of the Rings are either noble or ethereal like Éowyn and Galadriel, or simple rustics like Rosie, with one exception: Goldberry, the River-woman's daughter, wife of Tom Bombadil, who appears as a biblical Eve figure to Galadriel's Mary. In her view, the "roster of women" are "rich and diverse [characters], well drawn, and worthy of respect".[22] Hasser considered the most significant point about Goldberry's depiction as a feminine figure is that she shares domestic duties with her husband, and appears equal to him in status.[20]
Mediating between epic fantasy and the reader's world
Commentators such as Megan N. Fontenot,
The powerful women
Galadriel
The Elf-queen Galadriel, Lady of
Mac Fenwick compares Galadriel and what he sees as her monstrous opposite, the giant and evil spider
The scholar of English literature Maureen Thum describes Galadriel's masked power. She appears conventionally as a romantic medieval heroine in a garden, gives suitably medieval gifts, is admired from afar. But far from being imprisoned in her garden, she rules her realm and all who enter it "feel the power of the Lady".
Scholars including
Éowyn
Thum states that Éowyn wears in turn two masks, the first unconventional, the second conventional.
Jessica Yates wrote that Éowyn meets all the requirements for a classic woman warrior: a strong identity; skill in fighting; weapons and armour; a horse; special powers, seen when she turns the Ringwraith's prophecy of doom back onto him; and being modest and chaste.[5][36] Leibiger added that Éowyn is the only strong human female in The Lord of the Rings (Galadriel and Arwen being Elves), noting that her rejection of the woman's place in the home leads her to fulfil the prophecy about the leader of the Ringwraiths, the Witch-King of Angmar, that "not by the hand of man will [he] fall".[13]
Melissa Hatcher wrote in Mythlore that The Lord of the Rings has as a central theme the way that "the littlest person, a hobbit, overcom[es] the tides of war": that the real power is that of healing, protecting, and preserving.[5] She noted that Éowyn tries the path of the warrior and then becomes a healer, and that some academics have interpreted her choice as weak submission. Hatcher stated that instead, Éowyn is following Tolkien's "highest ideal: a fierce commitment to peace", embodying the "full-blooded subjectivity" that Tolkien believed necessary for peace.[5] She described Éowyn as "a complete individual who fulfills Tolkien's theme of peace, preservation, and cultural memory."[5]
Hatcher cited the philosopher Gregory Bassham's list of the six essential ingredients of happiness in Middle-earth, namely "delight in simple things, making light of one's troubles, getting personal, cultivating good character, cherishing and creating beauty, and rediscovering wonder", and stated that these are all seen in Éowyn and the Hobbit Sam, the gardener who inherits Frodo's Bag End and restores the Shire, "but in very few others".[5][37]
Arwen
Arwen is depicted as extremely beautiful; she is in Hatcher's view "a symbol of the unattainable, a perfect match for the unattainable Aragorn in Éowyn's eyes."[5] Leibiger wrote that Arwen's lack of involvement follows the general Elvish pattern of retreating to safe havens already established in The Silmarillion and continued in The Lord of the Rings.[13]
Enright wrote that Arwen, like
The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger wrote that the love of Arwen and Aragorn gives the hero his most definite romance characteristics. The relationship fits into the medieval romance tradition where the knight has "to endure hardships and perform great deeds for the love of a lady".[38] She noted that Tolkien "buries [this] ... in his appendixes" for the reader to find "if he looks".[38] Other than that, she wrote, there are just "a few scattered references in the story proper" to show that they are romantic lovers, but even those mostly do not so much as mention Arwen's name.[38] For example, when Galadriel gives gifts to each of the Fellowship as they leave Lothlórien, she asks Aragorn what he would like. He replies "Lady, you know all my desire, and long held in keeping the only treasure [Arwen, Galadriel's granddaughter] that I seek. Yet it is not yours to give me, even if you would...."[T 7]
The fantasy and science fiction author Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote that the Hobbit Merry sees why Éowyn is part of the story while Arwen is not, "for Éowyn, too, achieves the passing of the 'Heroic Age'" when girls rebel against being women and "dream of male deeds".[39]
The relationship between Aragorn and Arwen is made even more tender because of its origins. It, like the tale of Beren and Luthien, was written to be a reflection of Tolkien's own relationship with his wife, Edith. They were prevented from a relationship for a time, but when the time came they were reunited. He longed for her for years, and she gave up an engagement and her church to be with him, much like Aragorn had to wait to marry Arwen, and she gave up her immortality for him.
Other women
Rosie Cotton
Tolkien wrote in a letter that "the simple 'rustic' love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential [his italics] to the study of his (the chief hero's) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the 'longing for Elves', and sheer beauty."
Lobelia Sackville-Baggins
While Tolkien wrote to
Ioreth
Ioreth is a talkative wise-woman who works as a healer at the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith. The Wizard Gandalf learns from her that "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer", which inspires him to persuade Aragorn to tend to the wounded survivors of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, in the process defining Aragorn's power and publicly proving his birthright as the rightful claimant to the kingdom's vacant throne.[18][19] Rutledge compared Ioreth's announcing role to three Biblical women: Anna the Prophetess who is "looking for the redemption of Jerusalem", and who lets Jerusalem know about the infant Jesus;[47] Naaman's Israelite slave girl, who tells her mistress that the prophet Elisha can heal;[48] and the Samaritan woman at the well, who says "Can this be the Christ?"[49][24]
Rutledge ascribes a second role to Ioreth when the war is over: she shows, through her amusingly[24] depicted ordinariness, how current events turn first into lore, stories that get repeated and shared, and eventually into epic, part of Tolkien's construction of a body of myth, legend, and stories supposed to be about the distant past of the real world. Tolkien has presented the story of The War of the Ring from the point of view of the Hobbits. Now, back in the city, the Ring destroyed, and Sauron defeated, readers hear Ioreth, "no longer a towering Old Testament prophetess but an amusing goodwife full of words",[24] explaining everything to her country relative. Sam has become "an esquire"; the other Hobbits are in Ioreth's words "princes of great fame"; Frodo is already a legend, though his personal reality is very different. The reader is back at the level of ordinary folk, and Ioreth is part of a narrative that illuminates how stories develop.[50][18]
Gilraen
In film
Shippey comments that the leading women may have seemed insufficiently prominent to some of those responsible for marketing
The Tolkien scholar Janet Brennan Croft writes that in the book, Arwen is "never a temptress" or obstacle, she is "an inspiration and a source of strength", while when Éowyn presents a temptation, "his unquestioned commitment to and faith in his relationship with Arwen helps him pass the test".[55] In contrast, she writes, Jackson's Aragorn "reacts to both women ... as at least distractions if not outright temptresses".[55] She notes that in the film, Aragorn tries to reject Arwen's pendant, though she says it is hers to give, and he is "even rather harsh towards Éowyn's infatuation", where Tolkien has him speaking "with great delicacy of care for her feelings".[55]
The scholar of literature Maureen Thum comments more positively that Jackson presents "a vivid picture" of the story's three powerful women, their visual importance matching their "unusually high significance in a novel ... dominated ... by men".[56] Thum writes that Jackson "stresses what Tolkien implies"[56] by portraying Éowyn's feelings for Aragorn and her skill in battle. She finds the invented scenes for Arwen appropriate in reflecting Arwen's significance. She considers that Jackson has not changed Tolkien's portrait of Galadriel, other than to emphasise the power that Tolkien mentions that she has. In Thum's view, although his reworking of the three characters often departs radically from Tolkien's text, he accurately represents Tolkien's view of women.[56]
Notes
- Alfred Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott and Galahad.
- Norse saga, retold in William Morris's 1876 The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs.
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- ^ a b c d Tolkien 1954, book 3, ch. 6 "The King of the Golden Hall"
- ^ Tolkien 1955, book 5, ch. 3 "The Muster of Rohan"
- ^ Tolkien 1954a, book 2 ch. 8 "Farewell to Lórien"
- ^ Tolkien 1954a, Prologue, "Note on the Shire Records"
- ^ Tolkien 1955 Appendix A "The Númenórean Kings"
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The gender-role inversion in Arbo's painting does not last for long: later in the film, Éowyn takes the same position as the shield maiden Hervor in the painting, lying on a field strewn with dead bodies, where her brother, Éomer, finds her. The colors in Arbo's painting are the golds, reds, yellows, and blues found in Rohan in the film, down to the white of the steed that, in the painting, has survived its rider.
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