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Originally Posted by Huinesoron
Does it include toilets? I don't recall Tolkien mentioning them, so I assume people in Middle-earth don't possess bowels? And I guess all grain is imported from Gondor or the Shire (since nowhere else has farms mentioned), and the orcs of Moria have no need of food (their food source isn't mentioned, so must not exist)... and if we want to take this to its logical extreme, there are no women in the Elvenking's Halls, since none are ever mentioned as being there!
...the point is that any reading of Tolkien has to include gap-filling. To take it to truly ludicrous extremes: did Barliman Butterbur serve drinks to anyone except on the days Gandalf or the hobbits visited him? Obviously so - but it's not specifically described, so to assume he's actually doing his job is an inference. An ironclad logical one, but an inference all the same.
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The difference lies in the fact that toilets, agriculture and taverns that open every day are ordinary things in the ordinary world, part of the nonsubcreated substrate upon which Tolkien built his subcreation. The reader may take them as read. At the next remove, Tolkien engaged in what Shippey called
calquing: adding elements of a known primary-world culture, such as the Anglo-Saxons, which invite the reader to fill in the Rohirric blank with his own knowledge or impression of the Old English.
But this can't be extended to things like Nazgul which came completely out of his head. In fact, I think the balance is very slightly tilted the other way in that the primary calque for Middle-earth is of course medieval Europe, a culture not noted for its gender equality.