Utopian Shire

[Lalwendë]

What's that saying about the perfect society always being the one that was fifty years ago? That's the impression I get from what Tolkien was trying to paint for The Shire - it was the rural past of England that was just, but only just, out of his reach.

Of course we can find plenty of reasons why the Real World at that time might not have been so perfect, and we could probably find some reasons why The Shire was not so perfect. I mean, why did Bilbo have to teach Sam his 'letters'? Was there no schooling for working class Hobbit children? If I was to write a Marxist analysis of Tolkien's work then that would certainly figure highly...

But anyway, yes, The Shire approaches something Utopian in that there is a general air of happiness about the place and we do not see any obvious examples of suffering or oppression. There is no need for much 'policing' which suggests a lack of crime, and the classes (Sackville-Bagginses aside) seem to rub up nicely, certainly the upper crust Merry and Pippin treat Sam very well. Of course, I could just see The Shire that way as the world I lived in as a small child wasn't too different from The Shire, being rural and cosy and populated by Gaffer types.

There are plenty of readings of The Shire as being a bit 'anarcho-syndicalist' in that there are few 'rules' and little Authority yet people seem to work co-operatively and happily together. There have also been parallels drawn between The Shire (and Tolkien in general) with William Morris and his own idealised views of how the world ought to be. And still more, people have 'read' it as symbolising England in the age of Empire when people 'knew their place' and life was bountiful.

I suppose you can almost read whatever 'sort' of Utopia into it that you wish, really...and the biggest tragedy about what Saruman does is that he destroys this idyll and even though it can be 'repaired', the memory of it won't ever go, and it's very much Innocence Lost.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

What's that saying about the perfect society always being the one that was fifty years ago? That's the impression I get from what Tolkien was trying to paint for The Shire - it was the rural past of England that was just, but only just, out of his reach.

The basic trait of any conservatism is this: a longing for a past that never actually was but which they think there should have been. So conservatism is utopianism after all?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

The basic trait of any conservatism is this: a longing for a past that never actually was but which they think there should have been. So conservatism is utopianism after all?

I presume you mean classical conservatism, and not scary 'let's rip everything down and build business parks' neo-conservatism?

[Laurinquë]

Perhaps I'm just being an Alaskan, but I fail to see what is so great about a peaceful agrarian society. I would much rather live in a peaceful society that hasn't ripped the land to shreds, aka "tamed" it. For this reason I much prefer places like Lothlorien or Rivendell, where there is peaceful civilization, but also where the land has been left fairly undisturbed.

I do not think we should see a bygone era of pre-industrialization farming as a wonderful golden age of humanity, a time before the land was laid to waste or whatever, if the land has been farmed it has already been laid to waste, it's as simple as that.

Tolkien seems to have considered pre-industrialization England as the true England, when really he should have been looking back to a time before humans had ever laid eyes on the place.

For these reason, I cannot say that I would consider the Shire to be a utopia, or at least not one I would care to live in.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Laurinquë

Perhaps I'm just being an Alaskan, but I fail to see what is so great about a peaceful agrarian society. I would much rather live in a peaceful society that hasn't ripped the land to shreds, aka "tamed" it. For this reason I much prefer places like Lothlorien or Rivendell, where there is peaceful civilization, but also where the land has been left fairly undisturbed.

I do not think we should see a bygone era of pre-industrialization farming as a wonderful golden age of humanity, a time before the land was laid to waste or whatever, if the land has been farmed it has already been laid to waste, it's as simple as that.

Tolkien seems to have considered pre-industrialization England as the true England, when really he should have been looking back to a time before humans had ever laid eyes on the place.

For these reason, I cannot say that I would consider the Shire to be a utopia, or at least not one I would care to live in.

The English landscape has been that way for millennia by the hands of man and their farming activities. Tolkien liked to see green fields and hedgerows as much as he liked to see woodland, and before men began to farm, most of England was just wildwood. There is a delicate balance between farming and nature in this country and if farmers change their methods or just stop farming then we'd actually lose a lot of the beautiful landscapes as we know them.

If you take the Lakeland fells as just one example - hill farmers using traditional methods of turning sheep out on the same fields each year helps to keep the hillsides free of gorse and a place where wildflowers and wildlife can flourish. If farmers stop doing this - and many are, as it's about as hard a life as you could imagine, being a hill farmer - then the landscape would actually be quite ugly. Farmers in the UK are subsidised to maintain old practices in an attempt to stop some landscapes being despoiled as 'natural' isn't always that nice.

Tolkien enjoyed seeing the pretty, well tended fields of agricultural areas as much as he liked the woods and the wilder places - maybe even more if you look at how scary his woodlands are!

[Rumil]

When a squirrel could go from branch to branch from Land's End to John O' Groats.

It would have been a sight to see the Wild Wood of primeval Britain, with the chalk hills and rugged mountains poking their heads out of the treescape and the Eastern wetlands with reeds as far as the eye could see. But it was mostly gone by the Bronze Age.

There's a small wood on Cadair Idris which has never been cut down, and is very beautiful, but few others that have survived from prehistory.

A temperate forset can be inhabited by hunter-gatherers but if you start serious farming the forest becomes wood for building and heating and the hunting reserve of the nobility.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Rumil

When a squirrel could go from branch to branch from Land's End to John O' Groats.

Though of course if squirrels could do that now then we'd have no Reds left at all, as the only thing keeping the Greys from mixing with them and giving them Pox is the presence of isolated pockets of woodland

I'd not turn my nose up at seeing those wetlands though...

[Laurinquë]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

The English landscape has been that way for millennia by the hands of man and their farming activities. Tolkien liked to see green fields and hedgerows as much as he liked to see woodland, and before men began to farm, most of England was just wildwood. There is a delicate balance between farming and nature in this country and if farmers change their methods or just stop farming then we'd actually lose a lot of the beautiful landscapes as we know them.

If you take the Lakeland fells as just one example - hill farmers using traditional methods of turning sheep out on the same fields each year helps to keep the hillsides free of gorse and a place where wildflowers and wildlife can flourish. If farmers stop doing this - and many are, as it's about as hard a life as you could imagine, being a hill farmer - then the landscape would actually be quite ugly. Farmers in the UK are subsidised to maintain old practices in an attempt to stop some landscapes being despoiled as 'natural' isn't always that nice.

Tolkien enjoyed seeing the pretty, well tended fields of agricultural areas as much as he liked the woods and the wilder places - maybe even more if you look at how scary his woodlands are!

I understand that England and Alaska are quite dissimilar, what is good for Alaska is not necessarily good for England. However, what is wrong with an "ugly" landscape if it is natural? If the land were left uncultivated long enough it would probably stop looking so unpleasant as it would be reclaimed slowly by nature. However, it's true that England has some very interesting ecosystems that have adapted to agriculture, and agriculture must be maintained in these areas if they are to retain their present ecosystem.

But just because something has been one way for millennia does not necessarily mean it has to stay that way. Think of England though geologic time, where a few millennia mean nothing it all in the scope of all of earth's, and England's, history. Your beautiful landscapes have only been around for a very small amount of time - and are not naturally occurring - though I'm sure they're lovely none the less.

I don't personally know much about Tolkien's preferences for wilderness, but I believe you hit upon a very important point when you mentioned his penchant for depicting frightening woodlands, a point that has been discussed on The Downs before. He seemed to possess a very primeval view on dense, old growth forests. You might notice that place like the Old Forest and Mirkwood were shown to be dark and dangerous places, full of malice and creeping beasts; whilst open, cleared land was safe and a desirable place to be. I will note however that Tolkien presented pleasent creatures like the Ents, which went in contrast to his otherwise medieval take on trees and woodland. I, as a lover of forests and wilderness, appreciate this addition, and perhaps it can make up for Tolkien's otherwise derogative depictions of forests and wilderness.

[Lalwendë]

England has been under cultivation for so long that our species are thoroughly adapted to it and if we went back to wildwoods then we'd also lose many of those species. Red squirrels for example - as they can now only thrive in isolated pockets of woodland and even then they struggle. We've also a lot of birds adapted to hedgerows and birds of prey adapted over millennia to hunting open fields for mice and voles.

I think Tolkien liked variety of landscape to be honest - he has these vast woodlands which are untamed and frankly creepy, but he wouldn't have had any wide open vistas to write about if people hadn't cleared them! Taking just one place, the area of the Barrow-Downs must have at one time been cleared of gorse by setting sheep to graze there or it wouldn't have looked like that.