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This retreat into asceticism before setting out to perform a dangerous task is a common motif of myth, so it’s no surprise that we find it in LotR as well.
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There's no place for distraction in a dangerous situation. Perfectly sensible thing to do, which is probably why it's appears so often.
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You're right. But the fact that there are very few female characters in Tolkien's books doesn't bother me. It's the poor characterization of these female characters that bugs me. Jane Austen mostly wrote about women. Her stories were told from a female perspective. But here male characters were as convincing as her female characters. I don't see the same quality in Tolkien's writings.
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I've just finished reading
The Mariner's Wife in
Unfinished Tales. When the dramatic situation allowed he could portray a woman convincingly. Unfortunately for the person who'd like an accessible female character he does tend to show us characters' personalities through what they say and do, which requires their involvement in events close to the narration and their being forthcoming with their emotions. Galadriel is a Queen and the luxury of telling people what you're thinking and feeling is not for royalty. Does Queen Elizabeth give personal interviews to
The Mirror listing her favourite films or explaining what she thinks of the Prime Minister? Of course not; it would be inappropriate, although plenty of idiots would like to see it.
The same rule applies for Melian: the necessary distance of monarchy; we can get some sort of an idea about Morwen Eledhwen, because we see her in emotionally-charged circumstances and isolated from society (in any case, Hurin's family were pretty headstrong, poor fellow). I think it's quite believable that noblewomen should keep back a lot of themselves, especially since people like Aragorn and Gandalf behave in the same way, and we only see them in any more detail by witnessing more of their words and actions.
Austen had an unfair advantage in that she was writing about the provincial gentry rather than courtly high society; about the English countryside rather than the battlefields of Napoleonic Europe and about social rather than military events. Also her plots, in their tendency to culminate in weddings, couldn't very well avoid containing men. Battlefield warfare, when managed correctly, is not a mixed event, whereas a country ball necessarily is.