[davem]

Originally Posted by Child

It would be possible to say that it isn't important how whether the book has strong female characters --some have suggested this. But, even if the latter is true, my question still stands. In my mind those female characters born in an earlier age--Haleth, Idril, Luthien, Galadriel, Varda--are greater in number and stronger in nature than those whom Tolkien conceived for the first time in the Rings tale. Why is this?

I suppose it depends how seriously (or literally) we take Tolkien's repeated statements that he was attempting to write 'what really happened'. How much control did Tolkien have (or choose to have) over what he wrote?

I suppose he could have set out with a plan & wrote what he consciously wanted (or what he thought others might want). The early drafts are so full of false starts & dead ends, promising ideas that he just cast aside that I think he effectively surrendered to his muse (another incredibly powerful female figure in the Legendarium, if you like).

I can't help feeling that if he'd been more in control of what he produced rather than giving his Muse free reign we'd have a book that was more 'acceptable' to his contemporary audience, one that was easier to get published, & that would have been forgotten in a few years. The draw of LotR is in its sense of 'reality'. We feel it to be more than the invention of one man. Of course he could have put in more powerful & significant female figures, but then he'd have been writing it himself, rather than writing 'what really happened'.