B2MEM 2011, Day Eighteen: A Generous Heart

[azalaisdep]

Today's Challenge: The act of kindness or hospitability usually comes from a generous heart. Write a story or poem, or create a piece of art where your character displays this virtue.

Following straight on from yesterday in the Máhanaxar, the Powers retire to debate:

The Gift of a Fruitful Heart

“Another?”  Tulkas protests noisily. “

Comments

[curiouswombat]

Good for Yavanna.

Why would Tulkas complain about Eärendil? Presumably for turning up unannounced, as he had a right to sail West as the son of Idril.

[azalaisdep]

Ah, but he was Half-Elven, and at that point in the First Age the right to choose whether to be counted among the Eldar or the Edain hadn't been granted to the Half-Elven; that only comes later, after Earendil and Elwing have reached Aman and submitted to the Judgement of the Valar. The first time Earendil approaches Valinor, he can't find his way past the Enchanted Isles and the Shadowy Seas, and has to turn back; it's only when he later returns bearing a Silmaril that the Valar decide to let him through. So Tulkas may well be experiencing deja vu...

[curiouswombat]

Personally I see it as sexism! :~)

If your mother goes off and marries a man you needs must be counted as man unless the Valar give you the option to be otherwise - mortality or elfhood can, apparently, only be inherited through your father. Just as there is an insistence that Arwen, Elrohir and Elladan are Half-elven - when they have only 3/16 mortal blood - granted it is a little more mortal blood than their Maian blood but I don't expect anyone ever called Dior 'The Half-Mortal' or 'The Quarter Maian' either - just 'The Half Elven' - although he wasn't!

Poor Celebrian's half of her children's bloodline seems to count for nothing - and Galadriel might be one of the most powerful beings in Middle Earth, but she doesn't count when considering the bloodline of her only grand-children - they are just under 1/4 mortal after all - so much more important.

And so somehow I can easily believe that if Eärendil's father had been an elf he'd have had no problem at all

[azalaisdep]

I'm not entirely sure whether the Half-Elven thing is sexism, or more like Elf-ism - ie any mortal blood at all makes you Not Elven. (Except that all Peredhil are, for example, immortal unless they choose not to be, so actually they're pretty damn' Elven in all the ways that count.)

The reason I'm not sure whether we can say it's sexist is that, precisely because there never are any male Elves who marry Elven women, we don't know whether the Half-Elven thing would apply to their offspring in exactly the same way. (The fact that male Elves never do apparently marry Elven women, OTOH, may well be down to something fundamentally unequal in the way JRRT views the sexes, but is a slightly different issue, even though the latter is what prevents us having a clear answer about the former...)

[curiouswombat]

there never are any male Elves who marry Elven women,

I'm guessing you mean male Elves who marry mortal women - I can think of a few male Elves who married female Elves... :~P

Of course, in truth, the Prof wrote what worked best for his stories and, although he was both world building and myth building, like many other writers he tinkered with things, changed the back story, and so on anyway. And it would be natural for a gentleman of his era to see 'nationality' as inherited down the male line; but also, I guess, that anything that 'muddied' the pure blood line might be seen as calling 'race' into question - hence such descriptions as 'octoroon'.

But it is fun to speculate and moan about it sometimes!

[azalaisdep]

Argh, that's what I get for posting after I should have been in bed...

And yes, if we're going to choose to obsess about a fictional universe created by a middle-aged Catholic Edwardian don then it's hardly surprising if said universe has the customs and mores one might expect of a middle-aged, Catholic Edwardian don...

[curiouswombat]

I forgot that, oddly, I was writing a couple of days ago about the fact that 'history' tells us that it is more likely that an elleth will be attracted to a human man than an ellon to a human female.

It's in chapter two of something that I am writing and I'm onto chapter three now. I might start posting it on my journal soon - when I get a battle scene right in my head, and know that the next part will flow properly, so that the first couple of chapters don't need any more tinkering and revising!