The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum - View Single Post

Lalwendë · 02-10-2006, 07:25 AM

To me, it's swings and roundabouts... On the one hand, Tolkien actually did create some amazing female characters (the power hungry Galadriel for one) so a lot of the criticism of his work is not all that valid, but on the other hand he possibly could have done a lot more or developed certain characters to take a more complete role in the story.

I don't know if it is always reductive to bring into the argument the position of the Author. Certainly I think some arguments are a little overdone - such as to bring up the chestnut that Tolkien was trying to represent a 'medieval world' and thus this is the reason that women do not have such an important position. What? Tolkien was creating a secondary world, not recreating our own world, so he could do what the heck he wanted within it, and if that included a race of Amazonians then so be it; and anyway, he has Hobbits and Balrogs, and there weren't too many of those around in medieval times, were there? If Tolkien's work was a true reflection of medieval life than Eowyn may have been locked into a chastity belt and kept under guard to stop her going off to war at all, that's if she hadn't already been married off to Grima at the age of 11.

But I do think that we have to remember that any text is merely the product of a writer, and that writer's experience of the world will have a bearing on what is produced. Tolkien was a conservative man, living in the highly conservative world of Oxbridge academe, and a follower of the again highly conservative Catholic faith. Many writers before him, and many of his contemporaries, were including challenging female characters in their work, but we have to remember what their own political and social experiences and knowledge were like, and whether they exerted a big influence on their 'art' or not.

Today we live in a world which expects everything to be inclusive, even our history, but we cannot accept that sometimes the experience of people of another era, society, age, class, country, etc. will be different to ours. Of course we can critique them, but we cannot expect that they ought to 'have known better'. That way lies the path of being revisionist, altering the history books so that the past is made more palatable to us, changing Lord of the Rings so that Arwen takes a more active role. As a woman I would find it incredibly patronising if literature were rewritten to include more focus on women. As it is, I often find it's a case of going round in circles to discuss why a writer from another era did not include women in his work. Far more fruitful in my opinion would be to discuss where the existing women are placed within Tolkien's world, and what that says about the world they live in. That would do justice to those characters, and justice to the story as it goes beyond that 'barrier' (or glass ceiling!) we get stuck at of just endlessly trying to work out why there are so few women!

02-10-2006, 07:25 AM	#3
Lalwendë A Mere Boggart Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: under the bed Posts: 4,737	To me, it's swings and roundabouts... On the one hand, Tolkien actually did create some amazing female characters (the power hungry Galadriel for one) so a lot of the criticism of his work is not all that valid, but on the other hand he possibly could have done a lot more or developed certain characters to take a more complete role in the story. I don't know if it is always reductive to bring into the argument the position of the Author. Certainly I think some arguments are a little overdone - such as to bring up the chestnut that Tolkien was trying to represent a 'medieval world' and thus this is the reason that women do not have such an important position. What? Tolkien was creating a secondary world, not recreating our own world, so he could do what the heck he wanted within it, and if that included a race of Amazonians then so be it; and anyway, he has Hobbits and Balrogs, and there weren't too many of those around in medieval times, were there? If Tolkien's work was a true reflection of medieval life than Eowyn may have been locked into a chastity belt and kept under guard to stop her going off to war at all, that's if she hadn't already been married off to Grima at the age of 11. But I do think that we have to remember that any text is merely the product of a writer, and that writer's experience of the world will have a bearing on what is produced. Tolkien was a conservative man, living in the highly conservative world of Oxbridge academe, and a follower of the again highly conservative Catholic faith. Many writers before him, and many of his contemporaries, were including challenging female characters in their work, but we have to remember what their own political and social experiences and knowledge were like, and whether they exerted a big influence on their 'art' or not. Today we live in a world which expects everything to be inclusive, even our history, but we cannot accept that sometimes the experience of people of another era, society, age, class, country, etc. will be different to ours. Of course we can critique them, but we cannot expect that they ought to 'have known better'. That way lies the path of being revisionist, altering the history books so that the past is made more palatable to us, changing Lord of the Rings so that Arwen takes a more active role. As a woman I would find it incredibly patronising if literature were rewritten to include more focus on women. As it is, I often find it's a case of going round in circles to discuss why a writer from another era did not include women in his work. Far more fruitful in my opinion would be to discuss where the existing women are placed within Tolkien's world, and what that says about the world they live in. That would do justice to those characters, and justice to the story as it goes beyond that 'barrier' (or glass ceiling!) we get stuck at of just endlessly trying to work out why there are so few women! __________________ Gordon's alive!