Douglas Charles Kane’s “Arda Reconstucted: The Creation of the Published Simarillion”

[Voronwë_the_Faithful]

If you want it more directly: Doug do you believe Christopher Tolkien unintentionally revealed that he has something against women?

No.

I believe that the edits that Christopher Tolkien was responsible for (though won't don't know to what extent Guy Kay contributed to them) had the effect of significantly lessening the role of women in the published Silmarillion and in my opinion that has a detrimental effect on the book. I doubt very much that this was done intentionally (as I have said repeatedly. I don't know Christopher well enough to have any idea about whether it somehow reflects on his attitude towards women in general.

I respect the massive effort that Christopher has dedicated to preserving his father's legacy and making as much of his writing available as possible. By all accounts, he is a man of courtesy and principle, both of which I appreciate. I recognize that in working on publishing The Silmarillion he faced many challenges that contributed to its deficiencies (some of which he himself has subsequently acknowledged, although I wish he would provide more information about the editing process and the decisions that he made).