[Eve]

Ok guys, I’m typing this offline on Word since I don’t want to clog up my aunt’s phoneline (my cousin was rushed into hospital last night), so I’m replying to what you said from memory.

Firstly, sorry if I sounded shirty, I most certainly did not mean to imply that anyone was stupid. I got more than a little irritated, however, by asking a perfectly valid question and being told I had a filthy mind; I mean, it’s taken about 6 posts before anyone even started answering the question!

Yes, I’d agree that Tolkien’s work is fairly sexless, for whatever reason, and that as far as we know he was straight. Someone said something like “Did not the great Tolkien have a son? And did he not then have a wife?” What, *gasp*, kids before marriage, an ILLEGITIMATE son? Tolkien, you rascal! (joking, assumed that was a typo.) Although being married with kids isn’t necessarily a cast-iron guarantee of strict heterosexuality: look at Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, or come to that some of my friends who are bi and married (and better behaved than Wilde).

I’d also agree that the world he was in, both the literary tradition he was drawing from and the society he lived in, was pretty much male-dominated and women were unlikely to feature much. Though I’m not so sure about “no one wanting to read about women in fantasy”, since I don’t think the genre as we think of it today actually existed before he started writing. I’m getting more and more interested in that side of it, by the way: anyone fancy starting up a thread on, say, concepts of femininity and fertility in Tolkien?

*pause to sulk as I recollect that no one’s laughed at my joke about Gandalf with PMT yet. though possibly that’s in a different thread. ok, might let you off there.*

Still, it’s not as if he left women out altogether. There are, what, three romances on the go – Aragorn and Arwen, Eowyn and Faramir, Sam and Rosie – plus two married couples – Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, Galadriel and Celeborn. They’re all pretty colourless, wouldn’t you agree? Tom does talk a bit about his courtship of Goldberry, but that’s about all I can remember of those two; who, to be honest, are, well, a bit weird, wouldn’t you say? (I mean, Goldberry’s sitting with her feet in bowls of lilies, and Tom spends his whole time talking in verse.) Galadriel and Celeborn seem to be more co-rulers than a couple. Aragorn and Arwen is possibly the most bloodless romance I’ve ever seen: a couple of hints are dropped in Rivendell, then she turns up at the end and marries him, still without a hint of feeling on either side (ok, he turns Eowyn down, but that doesn’t say much). It’s all very stately and seems more like the kind of arranged marriage that would be helpful dynastically than a love match.

Eowyn and Faramir fall in love during the course of the novel (they actually KISS at one point, don’t they?), but I’ve never been totally convinced by that either. Eowyn seems to be intent on falling for a man who does all the things that she, as a woman, is prevented from doing: her attraction, if that’s the word, to Aragorn is a hero-worship type of thing, a possible way of realising her own ambitions. I’m trying to remember what emotions come over when she’s getting together with Faramir. Pity on his side, coming down to earth with a bump on hers. Again, it all seems a bit stately, I don’t remember seeing much sign of actual affection or passion (not that passion seems to be Tolkien’s thing). Sam and Rosie have a nice sweet bit of rustic courtship, and for me it’s the most touching romance in the novel (then I turn to the family trees in the appendix, see how many kids the poor woman had to carry, and shudder!). But it’s pretty short and it’s at the end. Also, I’ve always found the hobbits the most human and emotional people in the book.

Before I forget, the lack of sex thing. Well, nothing necessarily wrong with that, it makes a change from the “dirty old man” style of writing where the author (or critic, critics seem especially prone to this) is busy ferreting about trying to get sex into absolutely everything, usually as sordidly as possible. Austen writes more or less without sex (two offstage elopements, very discreetly covered, and an illegitimate character, but that’s all about the social consequences rather than the original sinning). She does write beautifully about affection, though; admittedly people often complain that she too is rather passionless (personally I reckon that fair enough, she tried it in “Sense and Sensibility” and realised it wasn’t her forte, and sensibly kept away from it afterwards). The relationship between Anne and Wentworth in “Persuasion”, for example, is very moving (had an English teacher who raved about “one of the most beautiful love letters in the English language), or all the little nuances of feeling in “Pride and Prejudice”. Compare the Bennett parents with Galadriel and Celeborn: not the world’s most successful marriage, and there’s quite a bit of caricature in there, but they’re a real couple with real problems and a real relationship going on. Her work may be pretty well sexless (and as Fay Weldon has pointed out, since sex made you very likely to get syphilis and/or die in childbirth at an early age, people had reasons for abstaining), but she could still write about human relationships and feelings.

Oh yes, and just to refute the charge (again) that I have a filthy mind and am delving too deeply into this, I reckon I’m pretty moderate in that department. I don’t see the Mines of Moria as a womb symbol, I’m not going to start talking about phallic imagery every time someone pulls out a sword; I’ve never liked Freud, old goats like D.H. Lawrence get on my nerves, and sexual readings of “Alice in Wonderland” just make me giggle. On the other hand, I am interested in sexuality and so forth in writing, and it’s not always quite that blazingly obvious: “Heart of Darkness”, for example, has some very interesting stuff beneath the surface.

Back to Tolkien. Right, covered the straight relationships. Now for the possible others. As I said earlier, there’s a healthy tradition of gay lovers (often warrior couples) in epic and so forth, Achilles & Patroclus and so on. Haven’t got my copy of the “Regeneration” trilogy to hand, but does anyone remember that bit where there are practically gay witch-hunts going on during WW1 and they’re talking about how on the one hand they’re encouraging this kind of brotherly love between the soldiers, but on the other hand they’re all worried about is it the right kind of love? Siegfried Sassoon (yes, he was gay, actually Wilfred Owen had a bit of a thing for him) wrote a few poems about this sort of ambiguity, carefully phrased of course (gay writers have often had to write in code for their own safety). And as for the English public school system…well, let’s just say that the idea wasn’t exactly unheard of, shall we? I honestly doubt that Tolkien was unaware of homosexuality.

So back to what I said right at the beginning of this thread. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start trying to read orgies into it, I can’t quite see Sam saying, “Hey, Frodo, fancy a quickie while Gollum’s asleep?” I’m talking about emotional relationships, which to be honest are more important anyway (there seems to be this myth going around that sexual orientation is all about sex, when that’s only a small part of it. You know, love, compatibility, feeling right with people of one gender and not with the other.) And you can imply it without actually having sex: look at all the eroticism in “Goblin Market” between the two “sisters”. It was more that kind of thing I was thinking of.

For starters, the men do have a distinct tendency to pair off. Can’t get all that much out of that, but I think it’s interesting. Ever heard of the Sacred Band of Thebes, sworn lovers (some with wives and kids after some years, but they still stayed in the band since it was the highest honour around) who fought side by side and weren’t defeated until Alexander trounced them? I find them particularly interesting considering the fuss they make these days about gays in the military: the idea was that they would be ashamed to do anything less than fight to the death before their beloved, spurring each other on. You can just see the Legolas and Gimli contest fitting in there, can’t you. (not that they’re necessarily a couple: hell, the Elves and Dwarves would be shocked to death at the thought! though they’re certainly Very Good Friends.) There’s a lot of male bonding in there, and it’s more than you see between the straight couples.

The main one is Frodo and Sam. Very deep devotion there, they’d unquestioningly give their lives for each other (well, taking into account Frodo’s commitment to the Ring problem), they know each other very well (while Frodo has slipped off, Sam is the only one to realise where he’s going and to catch up with him even though he’s invisible): the kind of affection you just don’t see in the straight couples in Tolkien. And if anyone put all that hand-holding and kissing into a novel today, everyone would assume they were a couple; I know, people viewed things differently in those days. (“Oh no, they’re just two sweet old maids who’ve been sharing a house together for thirty years!&#8221 [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] In a sense, I think Frodo was never going to be able to enter properly into a relationship with another person once the burden of the Ring was laid upon him; notice how he withdraws from society afterwards, while all the other hobbits are merrily getting married and having lots of kids? There are a lot of times, reading about Sam and Frodo, when I think “that’s love”. I certainly think it’s the most humanly touching part of the whole novel, the relationship between them. Look at the things Sam does for him, despite being scared and exhausted and intimidated by all the Great People making decisions over their heads. If anyone else, or at least the non-hobbits, had found themselves in the position of having to take on the Ring after Frodo’s presumed death, there’d probably have been this great hoo-hah about would they abuse the power, what could they do with it, would they be able to manage it on their own and so forth. Sam just acknowledges that he’s absolutely terrified, and after that it’s the only thing he can possibly do, and you bet he’s doing it mainly out of love for Frodo. I do like Sam.

so can we discuss that side of it now, please?

Lush – at last, someone else interested in fairy tales! have you read much about them yet? The Sleeping Beauty isn’t one I’ve read much about, but you’ve got me interested now. What do you reckon it’s all about? The action of being pricked by the spindle and bleeding would suggest loss of virginity, but I’m also thinking menarche (lots of fairy tales seem to be about women sexually coming of age, as it were: think of all the adolescent girls without mothers there to guide them!), especially considering the context of initiation by an older woman. I’ve recently come to the embarrassing realisation that I was getting this story muddled up in my head with Snow White! You can see why, the long sleep thing. What exactly happens again, doesn’t the whole castle freeze and a huge forest of thorns grow up outside, which the Prince has to battle through before waking her with a kiss? I’m not even sure where to BEGIN trying to work out the symbolism there, it sounds so resonant! high time I got myself a proper book on mythology and folk tales, instead of just reading all the retellings and originals I can get my hands on.

oh dear, I don’t know how long this will appear in the forum, but it’s pretty lengthy on Word. better finish it off here, hadn’t I!

what did you mean by "*cough* Eowyn *cough*", by the way?