Quote:
|
Perhaps there are some clearer connections you could draw for us?
|
My point concering the letters was that Tolkien mirrored the world of his time which was not conducive to building up female heroes - only as exceptions, since by and large the women were considered inferior in range of preocupations, expectations and initiative.
Even in the case of Eowyn, daughter of a king, the same prejudices concerning the role of females (which take the form of social mores or even institutuinalized rules) apply just the same as apparently during Tolkien's times:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by The house of healing
- My friend, said Gandalf, you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.
|
Her situation reflects, in the words of Johan Galtung, an institutionalized violence against women (rules which prohibit equal opportunities of development), which is necessarily based on a cultural violence (the idea that women are inferior in status/abilities/values/worth).