Great topic, Child!
You've brought up something that hasn't occurred to me before, but once I heard it I thought "Yes! Of course!"
Perhaps this insular tendency in the races of ME is part of why people with certain political/racial beliefs like LotR (to the chagrin of the rest of us).
One exception to the "gated community" model that I can think of is Bree, where Men and Hobbits lived together.
Quote:
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The Big Folk and the Little Folk (as they called one another) were on friendly terms, minding their own affairs in their own ways, but both rightly regarding themselves as necessary parts of the Bree-Folk. Nowhere else in the world was this peculiar (but excellent) arrangement to be found.
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Dwarves also frequented Bree; there were some in the common room of the Prancing Pony the night the hobbits met Aragorn. I don't know if Elves ever went there, but it was on the Road to the Havens, so I like to think they did.
Another example might be Ithilien after the War of the Ring. Not only were Men of Gondor (and at least one woman of Rohan) there, but Legolas brought elves from Greenwood to dwell there. One can only assume that Gimli went to visit his friend.
I wonder if Tolkien didn't make the diffeent races so insular so that he could keep them culturally/linguistically distict when he wrote them. I don't believe he kept them apart because he thought different races *should* be separate. (Otherwise why would he have one of his major heroes marry a woman of a different species?) In other words, maybe when he set up the world he made separate languages for different cultures, and he didn't want to deal linguistically with cross-pollenation between cultures, so he made the different races physically separated.
I think Tolkien approved of cross-species fraternization. Many of his heroes are "halves" or marry out of their "gated communities". Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Men, and Maiar form legendary friendships and the participants are respected and admired for doing so. Being an "Elf-friend" is a great thing in Tolkien's view.
I was disappointed that the Woses and Hobbits returned to being so separated from the rest of Middle Earth at the end of the war. I had hoped that the friendships of the members of the Fellowhip would extend to encompass their respective races, but it didn't happen. Why do you think this was so?
-Lily