HoMe: [G]NoMe Tome 1: On Things That Are Rare Except When They're Not (Part I, I-V)
I've started The Nature of Middle-earth and gotten through Part I, sections I-V, which includes many of the early bits that were released and caused such a stir: the length of Elven pregnancies and the convenient fact that Elven men are significantly older when they are "ready for marriage" (read: done tomcatting around) than Elven women, who are conveniently young and nubile when the grizzled olds are ready to settle down with them. (And also the reason why there are no Elf-women in the histories, which I didn't hear much yelling about but I'm sure it was there, just being conducted out of my admittedly small-these-days earshot.)
First and foremost: I think Tolkien would have been mortified that we are reading this and discussing it with such seriousness. (Which does not mean I won't discuss it with seriousness because Tolkien is long beyond being able to care, having been dead longer than I've been alive.) It seems really obvious to me as the kind of noodling around we writers do when trying to figure out how things work in our respective legendaria. I get squirmy even thinking about that stuff published. I say this not to discourage discussing NoMe (clearly) but to clarify my own understanding of the material in it as perhaps even less intended for public consumption than the drafts in the HoMe. As both a fan author and a scholar, I consider everything in the NoMe in that context, i.e., it is unlikely to convince me that my understanding of the legendarium requires a radical upheaval.
Time. Oh, time. Time and timelines. Perhaps one of the biggest banes of my existence as a Tolkien fan because they always feel like such a hot mess to me and so often mutually contradictory, and the NoMe material doesn't help.
It just doesn't add up. To me. But I fully acknowledge that I struggle with this material so maybe I'm missing something and would not be hurt/upset to hear from someone that, yes, it actually does make perfect sense.
How I've always handled the differences between the Years of the Trees and the Years of the Sun in my stories is to assume the two as functionally the same. In other words, a Year of the Tree as experienced by an Elf living in Valinor felt exactly the same as a Year of the Sun to an Elf living in Beleriand. This has something to do (in my mind) with the very special nature of the Light of the Two Trees. It slows time, sort of like approaching a black hole. This [conveniently] means that I can treat the timelines for YT in Aman and the timelines for YS in Middle-earth exactly the same.
At first, I felt gratified when I read, "In Middle-earth, one loä [Year of the Sun] aged an Elf as much as a year of the Trees, but these were in fact 10 times as long" (p. 5). That seemed to be pointing in the direction I've been heading for seventeen years now when making sense of the timelines. Then, on the very next page, it gets worse: a Year of the Trees equals 144 Years of the Sun (loär). JEEzum!
None of it hangs together. Later in the text, Tolkien states that Elves are most active until about age 60, at which point the feä begins to take over until, "by the age of 90-96 one of the Quendi had reached a stage similar to that of a vigorous and hale Mortal of high age and wisdom" (p. 19). Yet by the Noldorin arrival in Middle-earth, the main players--Fëanor and Fingolfin and the various grandchildren of Finwë--are all well past their prime and yet commit some of the deeds of greatest renown in the legendarium.
Tolkien, too, sees that his new ideas don't necessarily hang with the older material. In the much-talked-about material on pregnancy, he say, "This will not fit the narrative in the Silmarillion. What of Maeglin?" (p. 24). Again, the disconnect speaks to me of how draftlike of drafts these texts were. They're still at the phase, much like picking apart a knot, where the more picking one does the more hopelessly tangled the knot becomes.
Rarities and Exceptions. I got a good chuckle out of Tolkien's musings on twins, which he declares as "very rare" and then proceeds to name all the sets of twins in The Silmarillion (p. 22). Because twins are not rare. In the very next paragraph, he reminds us that we only see the "chief actors" in the history and their descendants, yet among those chief actors, we have four sets of twins. (He neglects to mention Elrond and Elros.) To be fair, he does hint that some of that might have to do with those later sets being half-Elven. Still.
It's a reminder of how contradictory the legendarium is, in this case literally within the same sentence. Imagine some canatic sees only the phrase "twins were very rare" and knows nothing else of the various sets of twins and proceeds to jump all over a fanwork that includes a set of Elven twins when even a teensy step backward shows that not only are their lots of twins, but there are lots of important twins in the story. As a writer myself (of original as well as fanfic), it is never hard for me to understand that putting something down doesn't elevate it to fact (much less the more nebulous "truth"). The word canon is misleadingly firm. We have a clearly stated fact, that is, till we step back to observe the many, many exceptions.
Narrators and Historiography. Of course, one of my chief interests in the new text is what is said of the narrators/historiography and whether/how the narrators are presented. I found this paragraph very interesting:
It must be remember, however, in considering the records and legends of the past, that these (especially those made by or handed down through Men) often only mention or name persons who play a recorded part in the events, or were the direct ancestors of such chief actors. It cannot therefore be concluded from silence alone, whether in narrative or in genealogy, that any given person had no children, or no more than are named. (p. 22)
Maturity. Oh me. The stuff on ages of maturation bugs me on so many levels.
First: "the Eldar grew to maturity less quickly than did the Avari" (p. 22). The rather racist assumptions of the Avari found in Laws and Customs among the Eldar--those which draw very much on the stereotype of the "savage"--can be justified as the perspective of the narrator, who is very explicitly identified as Ælfwine, i.e., someone without firsthand knowledge of any Avari who is repeating what he is told by a bunch of [potentially racist/ethnocentric] Eldar about Avari. But this ... is Tolkien writing as Tolkien, not through a narrator, which is pretty rare in and of itself.
What he seems to be doing here is rooting into biology/"nature" the idea that the Avari were less intellectually sophisticated than their Eldarin brethren. Elves who need longer to mature are seen as more advanced, i.e., his specific note that Fëanor required a full year in the womb rather than the usual approximate nine months. I suspect I'm putting too much a modern spin on it here (I don't know), but it also reminds me uncomfortably of the tendency to assume that children of color reach maturity faster than White children (and can, thus, be held accountable to adult standards of behavior where White children are pardoned with such phrases as "boys being boys"), as well as the tendency to assume that kids in "other countries" reach maturity faster than kids in the Western world (so child marriage, for example, can be excused as "just their culture" and thus untouchable rather than the abuse and rape of mostly young girls).
The concept of "maturity" is thorny with respect to gender as well. On page 29, Tolkien talks about when marriage and childbearing take place. The optimal age for men is age 48; for women, it is age 20.
ARRRRGH. This is one of those times when I feel like the texts very much reflect--and show the limitations of--Tolkien's male perspective. Of course the notion that grizzled old dudes tomcatting after nubile [virginal] PYTs is somehow rooted in "nature," not an aspect of culture that is itself warped and dismissive of the value of women by catapulting them from childhood to procreativity (whence they are drained and slip toward senescence). (See above about the correlation that seems to exist between later maturity and greater intellectual/creative achievement.) I know people will point out Victorian culture--hell, 1950s culture, since this was written c. 1959--but I have zero fucks to give about that. As a woman and a feminist, it creeps me the hell out, and I'm sorry it was written--however informally--into the "canon." Blech.
Withdrawal [not as a contraceptive method]. While we're on the subject of sexism, there is the issue of "quiescence or withdrawal" of Elven women before and after childbirth, which since their schedule is on the bonkers 144 YS = 1 YT discussed above gives us this tidbit:
For the same cause, Men who had dealings with the Eldar often saw far less of the Elf-women, and might even be unaware that some Elven-king or lord had a wife. For the withdrawal and quiescence of the wife might occupy the whole time of his sojourn among the Eldar, or indeed much of his whole mortal life-time ... [it] would in mortal terms endure for about 36 to 48 years. (p. 24)
On the one hand, this offers an explanation for the lack of women in the legendarium, where a flat-earth mythology demands awkward rewrites involving domes and magical Trees and one year = 144 but having only 18% of named characters as women goes unaddressed (credit to the LotR Project for that data). Well I guess we have an explanation (and therefore recognition of how off this particular aspect of the legendarium is?)
There's also the hint at the "Mannish" narrator again.
But. BUT. The explanation itself is so dreadfully sexist that I can't even. Once again, the exclusion of women from the political sphere is credited to "nature" rather than culture and gender roles. It's the Middle-earth version of excluding women on the base of "hysteria" and emotionality and PMS and the maternal instinct even as men are the ones starting wars that kill millions and shooting up concerts and schools and nightclubs and still get to be the "rational" and "logical" sex who by default is assumed to be competent to be in charge.
ARRRGH2.
Pregnancy. I'm not even saying anything on this. It's evidence, to me, of how the ideas being played with here about time are fundamentally broken when applied in context.
ELF SEX.
But the act of procreation ... is longer and of more intense delight in Elves than in Men: too intense to be long endured. (p. 27.
WOW. Chew on that, fanfic writers!
I assume this means that Elf-men don't take half a lifetime to be able to reliably find the clitoris, or maybe this is again the male perspective and Elf-women actually get headaches at the same rate as Mortal women.
This also seems to be a very clever way for Tolkien to ensure that his Catholic ideal that sex only happens for procreation is reflected in Elven behavior (especially given some of the skeevy >.> stuff in Appendix 1 about Elves as "unfallen" humans, see p.p. 407-9). They stop having sex at a point because it's so damn good that they just can't stand it, you guys.
>.> This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
https://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/449647.html
First and foremost: I think Tolkien would have been mortified that we are reading this and discussing it with such seriousness. (Which does not mean I won't discuss it with seriousness because Tolkien is long beyond being able to care, having been dead longer than I've been alive.) It seems really obvious to me as the kind of noodling around we writers do when trying to figure out how things work in our respective legendaria. I get squirmy even thinking about that stuff published. I say this not to discourage discussing NoMe (clearly) but to clarify my own understanding of the material in it as perhaps even less intended for public consumption than the drafts in the HoMe. As both a fan author and a scholar, I consider everything in the NoMe in that context, i.e., it is unlikely to convince me that my understanding of the legendarium requires a radical upheaval.
Time. Oh, time. Time and timelines. Perhaps one of the biggest banes of my existence as a Tolkien fan because they always feel like such a hot mess to me and so often mutually contradictory, and the NoMe material doesn't help.
It just doesn't add up. To me. But I fully acknowledge that I struggle with this material so maybe I'm missing something and would not be hurt/upset to hear from someone that, yes, it actually does make perfect sense.
How I've always handled the differences between the Years of the Trees and the Years of the Sun in my stories is to assume the two as functionally the same. In other words, a Year of the Tree as experienced by an Elf living in Valinor felt exactly the same as a Year of the Sun to an Elf living in Beleriand. This has something to do (in my mind) with the very special nature of the Light of the Two Trees. It slows time, sort of like approaching a black hole. This [conveniently] means that I can treat the timelines for YT in Aman and the timelines for YS in Middle-earth exactly the same.
At first, I felt gratified when I read, "In Middle-earth, one loä [Year of the Sun] aged an Elf as much as a year of the Trees, but these were in fact 10 times as long" (p. 5). That seemed to be pointing in the direction I've been heading for seventeen years now when making sense of the timelines. Then, on the very next page, it gets worse: a Year of the Trees equals 144 Years of the Sun (loär). JEEzum!
None of it hangs together. Later in the text, Tolkien states that Elves are most active until about age 60, at which point the feä begins to take over until, "by the age of 90-96 one of the Quendi had reached a stage similar to that of a vigorous and hale Mortal of high age and wisdom" (p. 19). Yet by the Noldorin arrival in Middle-earth, the main players--Fëanor and Fingolfin and the various grandchildren of Finwë--are all well past their prime and yet commit some of the deeds of greatest renown in the legendarium.
Tolkien, too, sees that his new ideas don't necessarily hang with the older material. In the much-talked-about material on pregnancy, he say, "This will not fit the narrative in the Silmarillion. What of Maeglin?" (p. 24). Again, the disconnect speaks to me of how draftlike of drafts these texts were. They're still at the phase, much like picking apart a knot, where the more picking one does the more hopelessly tangled the knot becomes.
Rarities and Exceptions. I got a good chuckle out of Tolkien's musings on twins, which he declares as "very rare" and then proceeds to name all the sets of twins in The Silmarillion (p. 22). Because twins are not rare. In the very next paragraph, he reminds us that we only see the "chief actors" in the history and their descendants, yet among those chief actors, we have four sets of twins. (He neglects to mention Elrond and Elros.) To be fair, he does hint that some of that might have to do with those later sets being half-Elven. Still.
It's a reminder of how contradictory the legendarium is, in this case literally within the same sentence. Imagine some canatic sees only the phrase "twins were very rare" and knows nothing else of the various sets of twins and proceeds to jump all over a fanwork that includes a set of Elven twins when even a teensy step backward shows that not only are their lots of twins, but there are lots of important twins in the story. As a writer myself (of original as well as fanfic), it is never hard for me to understand that putting something down doesn't elevate it to fact (much less the more nebulous "truth"). The word canon is misleadingly firm. We have a clearly stated fact, that is, till we step back to observe the many, many exceptions.
Narrators and Historiography. Of course, one of my chief interests in the new text is what is said of the narrators/historiography and whether/how the narrators are presented. I found this paragraph very interesting:
It must be remember, however, in considering the records and legends of the past, that these (especially those made by or handed down through Men) often only mention or name persons who play a recorded part in the events, or were the direct ancestors of such chief actors. It cannot therefore be concluded from silence alone, whether in narrative or in genealogy, that any given person had no children, or no more than are named. (p. 22)
- This text is c. 1959, which puts it close to the composition of the texts collected in Myths Transformed that allege a "Mannish" narrator and a desire to change from the Elven to Mortal mode of transmission. I've written before about why I don't think these intentions were carried out and The Silmarillion reflects an Elven narrator, but this is certainly another suggestion that this change was on Tolkien's mind.
- This speaks specifically of children but certainly seems to support Dwim and Elleth's concept of the "textual ghost."
- WOW does this have the potential to expand the family tree! Especially the idea of "more [children] than are named." I wonder if Tolkien was thinking of his statement that single children were rare among Elves and threw this out as a corrective because there are quite a lot of single children (just like the quite a lot of twins above).
Maturity. Oh me. The stuff on ages of maturation bugs me on so many levels.
First: "the Eldar grew to maturity less quickly than did the Avari" (p. 22). The rather racist assumptions of the Avari found in Laws and Customs among the Eldar--those which draw very much on the stereotype of the "savage"--can be justified as the perspective of the narrator, who is very explicitly identified as Ælfwine, i.e., someone without firsthand knowledge of any Avari who is repeating what he is told by a bunch of [potentially racist/ethnocentric] Eldar about Avari. But this ... is Tolkien writing as Tolkien, not through a narrator, which is pretty rare in and of itself.
What he seems to be doing here is rooting into biology/"nature" the idea that the Avari were less intellectually sophisticated than their Eldarin brethren. Elves who need longer to mature are seen as more advanced, i.e., his specific note that Fëanor required a full year in the womb rather than the usual approximate nine months. I suspect I'm putting too much a modern spin on it here (I don't know), but it also reminds me uncomfortably of the tendency to assume that children of color reach maturity faster than White children (and can, thus, be held accountable to adult standards of behavior where White children are pardoned with such phrases as "boys being boys"), as well as the tendency to assume that kids in "other countries" reach maturity faster than kids in the Western world (so child marriage, for example, can be excused as "just their culture" and thus untouchable rather than the abuse and rape of mostly young girls).
The concept of "maturity" is thorny with respect to gender as well. On page 29, Tolkien talks about when marriage and childbearing take place. The optimal age for men is age 48; for women, it is age 20.
ARRRRGH. This is one of those times when I feel like the texts very much reflect--and show the limitations of--Tolkien's male perspective. Of course the notion that grizzled old dudes tomcatting after nubile [virginal] PYTs is somehow rooted in "nature," not an aspect of culture that is itself warped and dismissive of the value of women by catapulting them from childhood to procreativity (whence they are drained and slip toward senescence). (See above about the correlation that seems to exist between later maturity and greater intellectual/creative achievement.) I know people will point out Victorian culture--hell, 1950s culture, since this was written c. 1959--but I have zero fucks to give about that. As a woman and a feminist, it creeps me the hell out, and I'm sorry it was written--however informally--into the "canon." Blech.
Withdrawal [not as a contraceptive method]. While we're on the subject of sexism, there is the issue of "quiescence or withdrawal" of Elven women before and after childbirth, which since their schedule is on the bonkers 144 YS = 1 YT discussed above gives us this tidbit:
For the same cause, Men who had dealings with the Eldar often saw far less of the Elf-women, and might even be unaware that some Elven-king or lord had a wife. For the withdrawal and quiescence of the wife might occupy the whole time of his sojourn among the Eldar, or indeed much of his whole mortal life-time ... [it] would in mortal terms endure for about 36 to 48 years. (p. 24)
On the one hand, this offers an explanation for the lack of women in the legendarium, where a flat-earth mythology demands awkward rewrites involving domes and magical Trees and one year = 144 but having only 18% of named characters as women goes unaddressed (credit to the LotR Project for that data). Well I guess we have an explanation (and therefore recognition of how off this particular aspect of the legendarium is?)
There's also the hint at the "Mannish" narrator again.
But. BUT. The explanation itself is so dreadfully sexist that I can't even. Once again, the exclusion of women from the political sphere is credited to "nature" rather than culture and gender roles. It's the Middle-earth version of excluding women on the base of "hysteria" and emotionality and PMS and the maternal instinct even as men are the ones starting wars that kill millions and shooting up concerts and schools and nightclubs and still get to be the "rational" and "logical" sex who by default is assumed to be competent to be in charge.
ARRRGH2.
Pregnancy. I'm not even saying anything on this. It's evidence, to me, of how the ideas being played with here about time are fundamentally broken when applied in context.
ELF SEX.
But the act of procreation ... is longer and of more intense delight in Elves than in Men: too intense to be long endured. (p. 27.
WOW. Chew on that, fanfic writers!
I assume this means that Elf-men don't take half a lifetime to be able to reliably find the clitoris, or maybe this is again the male perspective and Elf-women actually get headaches at the same rate as Mortal women.
This also seems to be a very clever way for Tolkien to ensure that his Catholic ideal that sex only happens for procreation is reflected in Elven behavior (especially given some of the skeevy >.> stuff in Appendix 1 about Elves as "unfallen" humans, see p.p. 407-9). They stop having sex at a point because it's so damn good that they just can't stand it, you guys.
>.> This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
https://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/449647.html