[Lush]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

Much as I enjoy your knack for creating lively threads, Lush, I think all that's been proven here is that it's easy to provoke a certain type of response with a certain type of topic.

You started the thread off with a rant against people who dismiss questions about why there aren't more females in LotR with simple explanations. Okay, I get that it bugs you. But there are inevitably boneheaded replies to any topic, from Balrog wings to Elf ears.

As has been mentioned, the question itself is sort of self-limiting. LotR doesn't have a lot of female characters. Why? Over the years, I've seen as many reductive boneheaded replies for "why" as for "why not": "Tolkien doesn't understand women"; "Tolkien doesn't like women"; "Tolkien believes women should be pretty, barefoot, and pregnant", etc. If you have gained new insight into this question from your recent studies of Tatar and fairy-tale, I'm pretty sure you haven't really articulated them yet, and you certainly didn't share them in your first post.

There aren't a lot of female characters in LotR. In the end Tolkien didn't write them and we can only guess at why or why not. In my view it probably wasn't because of any particular conscious agenda one way or the other. Is there really a lot of meat on this bone that hasn't been chewed yet?

Actually, I started this thread with a very specific question - absence of women in the Fellowship - and a very specific criticism - one which Lalaith nailed on the head much better than I did when I attempted it, in mind. It has morphed from then on out.

On the other hand, I think that the idea that gender discussions automatically produce a knee-jerk result isn't borne out by Downs history.

Over the years, there have been numerous thoughtful discussions of gender in LotR, as well as deep discussions of the individual female characters that are present in the work. Fordim's recent "Calling all women", Birdland's "Tolkien the Matricide", and Child's old "The 'Fair' Sex in LotR", for instance, all tackle Tolkien in relation to gender with interesting results (ironically, doing a quick search of "Tolkien sexist" will fetch all these topics). Topics on Galadriel, Arwen, and Éowyn have all yielded fruitful, albeit sometimes fiery, results as well.

In other words, a good topic breeds good discussion, even if there will be the inevitable amount of "noise" in the form of knucklehead replies.

Several topics have already been suggested which I bet could spin into interesting threads.

I wasn't criticising the Downs in general, but a very specific strain of thought in particular.