A good point. I've had some experience with this in the form of my brother - he finds it extremely strange that I should play male characters in RPG's. I agree one hundred percent. Of the books I do not read for school, I do not consider the author's intent in writing the book in very many of them. I might think about a book, especially a very good one, but that isn't my goal of reading - I read for enjoyment. If I don't enjoy a book, I will not finish it (prime example: Jane Eyre. Couldn't stand it). And that enjoyment comes primarily from the plot. I hate having to slog through books (*coughGreatExpectationscough*). In my leisure books I rarely go any deeper analytically than plot level.

In the old days, they used to, Fea....there's Hardy, with Tess of the d'Urbervilles. There's one of the (sorry - just my POV) worst books about women ever written, Women in Love by the ghastly DH Lawrence, and in contrast, one of the best novels ever written about a woman, Anna Karenina.

I wonder, incidently, if men are more likely to read Anna Karenina (because it was written by a man) than Jane Eyre? Should Charlotte Bronte have stuck to her original plan and remained Currer Bell?

An Update
 

Just wanted to let you all know that my class and I have had our encounter with The Hobbit and that it went very well. Unlike my experience with Treasure Island the issue of the story as a "boy's adventure" didn't come up so vehemently, and when it did most of the students did not feel that it was a terrible "flaw" in the work. There were still a shocking number of students who found the book "boring" :eek: and who complained about having to "force" themselves to read it :eek:

These students shall receive about as much comment as they deserve....

As to the rest of the students: there was still an interseing gender-divide in the class. It was obvious from the get-go that the majority of the book's real diehard fans were men -- there were plenty of women who had read it (and LotR) as children and who loved it, but in a class of about 180 students that has 12 men in it, to have SIX of those men all fans of the book is a remarkable ratio.

There were complaints about there being "no women" but these were quickly dealt with by other students pointing out how it's got very few humans as well! The one point that really came out in our discussion, however, is how UNLIKE the story is from other boys adventures.

Typically, the boy's adventure ends with the boy becoming a man through an apprehension of or search for some kind of father figure; he also gains in his material circumstances (ie he gets rich or finds a better home), and almost inevitably the boy performs some kind of physically heroic act. Very little of this is true of The Hobbit though!

Bilbo has Gandalf as a mentor but for the most part, Bilbo's moral development and education takes place while the wizard is away.

Bilbo does get richer, but not vastly richer and he ends up using his dragon gold to cement his current lifestyle rather than to augment it. His life at the end of his adventures is not significantly different than it was before -- sure, he has changed, but his circumstances have not.

Bilbo does perform all kinds of physical heroism (particularly with the spiders) but his most heroic acts come at the end when he gives up the Arkenstone (presaging Frodo's great heroism). He's so non-physcically identfied at the end that he is actually unconcious during the Battle of Five Armies.

So what we began to realise is that Bilbo (who gets his adventurous streak from his MOTHER's "Tookishness") ends up in a story that looks like a boy's adventure only to have that appearance overturned at the end. It even begins to look as though Bilbo's final stance is more like what you find in traditional GIRL's adventure stories/coming of age stories insofar as he has learned about his own capacity in a world that does not afford him a lot of scope, other ways of acting and being active than the purely or merely physical, and in managing to find a way to return home and make that domestic space simultaneously a place that he lives in for the rest of his live AND a place of freedom rather than imprisonment.

So....what do you think...The Hobbit as boy's adventure become girl's coming of age story? Bilbo as female? Fordim has off his rocker?