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Back to Tolkien's era and setting: it was one in which the men were the professors, smoking pipes, going for walks, drinking 'heathily', discussing 'interesting' things, while the women were at home cleaning up, talking about mundane every day things, making the home clean, orderly, and secure as they needed it.
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I can see what you mean, littlemanpoet, but I tend to shy away from these historical generalisations. Tolkien's life and work spanned a very turbulent and rapidly-changing period in history, in which gender roles were just one aspect of society that saw drastic change. When he was born women didn't even have the vote in Britain, yet by the time he died the government was introducing legislation to crack down on gender discrimination in the workplace.
Now, it was my privilege whilst at university to know a man who was studying for his second degree, having found himself at a loose end after retiring from the Civil Service. He began his career in the late 1950s and worked under the formidable personage of the first woman to pass the Civil Service fast-track examination. As I mentioned in another thread last year Oxford was awarding degrees to women long before they were allowed to vote in British elections, and no sooner were women admitted to the bar than there were a number of successful applications.
The upshot of this is that it is difficult to make any sort of judgement at the social pressure of society. Even if we were to accept that women's place in the 1950s was in the home (a roughly accurate view, although by no means entirely representative), I have never believed that one's personality is so thoroughly moulded by society as to allow social status to dictate whether or not one is a gardener or a lover of wild things, or even a mixture of both.
As for the rather broader canvas of this thread's subject, albeit that Sharkû's quotation from the Letters does tie us down to horticulture alone, some people simply cannot function without being in total control of their environment. We all know that this is a futile ambition, but nonetheless it is one held by many. I maintain that this is not a gender issue.