Don't do me like that

[Bêthberry]

Perhaps this is the proper junction to step in with some thoughts that some of the latter posts have suggested to me. No, I have no intention of revisiting the big blunderbuss thread.

I've been thinking of some of the fairy tales and their depictions of women and women's relationships. And of men's. And of gender and gender differences. And also of relationships as depicted in the literary tradition which Tolkien did not like, apparently--classical literature. And trying to figure out just what it is that Lush wants to say.

Now, she has said she finds the Fellowship gender-neutral:

Originally Posted by Lush

But the more I look at fairy-tale, and the more I look at the all-male Fellowship, the more I become convinced that this particular entity is, in itself, more gender-neutral than it appears on the surface. All of the bonding, camaraderie, and shared responsibility, in my opinion could have easily occured within a mixed-gender setting. Tolkien did not choose it to be so, and while that is his prerogative, I do not see the gender of the members of the Fellowship to be a commentary on gender in and of itself.

. . . .


But what I was talking about is a general sense of the lack of importance of gender when it comes to the Fellowship's story. Thousands of female readers respond powerfully to the bonds between the males in the Fellowship, and I daresay that most of us can identify. As I wrote in my original post, I honestly don't care if in the 'real' world outside the page Tolkien was a man, who served in a war with other men. His own life and his own experiences and his own intentions can only take me so far. I don't doubt their importance. But, as I've already written, the process of reading and experiencing the book belongs to each individual reader, and cannot be taken away from us. Personally, the "maleness" of the Fellowship does not register with me anymore. I pay very close attention to gender specifics and the way they apply to the females that come up in LotR, but never to the males.

I'm not sure what she means by 'gender-neutral', other than the obvious point but I'm not sure I would apply it to that classical tradition of male friendship. I don't know of course if Lush is thinking along those lines, but the comments got me thinking. There's that very famous painting of The Death of Socrates by David. It might not reproduce well here, but off on the left in the far background is, supposedly, Socrates' wife, leaving him to his heroic death scene with his male buddies. This has always to me typified the basic and inherited tradition of bonding and friendships in western culture: the important friendships are those between men. To some extent, this cultural value was shifted under Christianity, but not exclusively--witness David's vision of it in 1787.

So what's going on here? Tolkien rejected classical literature for the sagas, tales, mythologies of the northern peoples. But did he in fact inherit and maintain the tradition of male friendship from classical literature, and not incorporate the gender specifics of fairy tale?

After all, there is only the vaguest hint of sisterhood or female society in Ioreth and her sisters and we never have very significant scenes between Arwen and her grandmother or Rosie and Mrs Cotton. In that sense, Tolkien is the reverse image of Austen, who never shows male characters alone without women.

And here davem is suggesting some sort of maenade behaviour for us?