Females in the Fellowship

[The Saucepan Man]

Does anyone think Tolkien was better at crafting evil female characters than ones dedicated to doing good?

Actually, no. I think that these instances of evil female characters in JRRT's works (Ungoliant, Shelob and Thuringwethil) only lend support to the argument that his view of woman as literary characters was somewhat idealised. Discounting Lobelia (for the reasons already stated), they were all hideous creature-monsters, and there is little development of their characters beyond the fact that they are evil.

In these respects, they provide a sharp contrast to the Human and Elf females that we encounter, who are invariably fair and virtuous, and many of whom (Eowyn in particular, as this thread has shown) are well-developed and complex characters. JRRT seems to have been far more comfortable with female characters when they were of the "fair and virtuous" variety. (But, then again, aren't we all [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img].)