Why Are There No Women In Tolkien's World?

[spiffynamehere]

It has, at this point, become a bit obvious to point out the lack of female characters in children’s entertainment: the Pixar movies, the morning cartoon shows, even the Legos that they play with - unless, of course, the product in question was designed specifically for girls, which raises another set of issues about self-reinforcing stereotypes.

Comments

[cleotine]

As far as I know, Peter Jackson & co wanted to pimp up the role of Arwen for LotR. They filmed fighting scenes with her for part2 that even made it into the first trailer. But fans protested so insistently that they got scared and cut her out again :/ At least they had the courage and gave Eowyn some nice scenes...

Edit: Just for reference: LotR as a book has tons of male characters and (only) six or eight female ones.

[cupkate]

Yup, they originally wanted to write a part where she comes to fight at Helm's Deep. As much as I like Tolkien as is, I think that could have been good times.

[theditor]

I'm a feminist and a Tolkien fan, and although I can completely understand being turned off by the lack of women in the movies, there are, in fact, many strong female characters in his world. Not as many as there could be, of course, but there are named women of all of the major races: men, elves, dwarves and hobbits. He even created female talking TREES! There are many critiques to be made of both the books and movies, but I don't think it's quite fair to go so far to say "Tolkien seems to have wiped women off the face of Middle-earth."

[spiffynamehere]

Named /= significant character. In the movies, there's really only Eowyn, Arwen, and Galadriel. The only other one I can think of offhand is Goldberry.

[theditor]

That's why I can understand being turned off by the movies. I'm not claiming he's an expert on female characters, but "The Hobbit" and "LOTR" barely scratch the surface of everything he wrote about Middle-earth.

[clafount]

Uh, there may be female talking trees but they don't appear as individual characters (the kind who actually speak) in the books

[ljtaylor]

The lack of female characters in this film was so prominent that I actually forget about Cate Blanchett's, well, cameo. The problem, I suspect, lies with the neckbeard fanboys. But seriously. Tolkien wrote this book a loooong time ago and I don't see the harm in changing the gender of some of the dwarves in the company, for instance.

[evil_laugher]

Oooh, I would've loved the nerd-rage if he had changed the genders.

[cupkate]

Not long enough ago that he couldn't have had more female characters. He was writing (and kind of friends) with C.S. Lewis, who wrote 2 of 4 main characters as totally smart, adventurous girls.

[pleasure_past]

I'm going to be all Narnia-nit-picky right now and say that the exact ratio of the children was 5:6 (Polly, Susan, Lucy, Aravis, and Jill vs Diggory, Peter, Edmund, Shasta, Caspian, and Eustace). It's also worth noting that Eustace is in one book that Jill isn't in and Peter is in one book that Susan isn't in, which is unusual because, with the exception of Caspian, Narnian protagonists tend to turn up in male/female pairs. So a weighted ratio would be 5:8.

Still, we're miles better than Tolkien here just in terms of female visibility.

[proofrawk]

I'm glad this was posted here. ontd_p is full of fangirls/boys tripping all over themselves with ham-fisted arguments about ~the times.

I only read 1 of the books, so I can't really speak about them. but I can only remember 3 significant women from the movies, as opposed to like...20? men. and a complete absence of mothers, in contrast with the reverence shown to fatherhood. if you don't see a problem with that, or if you think all misogyny that happened before The Feminine Mystique was published should get a free pass, then idek what to say to you...

I mean, since I haven't read the books, I can't say what originated in the source material and what didn't, but I certainly don't get the impression that Tolkien had tons of significant, fully developed female characters that Jackson eliminated from the films, so.

[spiffynamehere]

I think the only one he eliminated was Goldberry? This was a consequence of taking out Tom Bombadil (the Green Man figure), her husband, to cut the first movie down. Tolkien does, to be fair, have more female characters outside of LOTR and The Hobbit. But not nearly as many people have read those collections, and they tend to fit more into the backstory and framework of the characters and universe, so there's not much you could do bringing them into the trilogy.

[ljtaylor]

oh god the comments saying things like WELL TOLKIEN NEVER SAW WOMEN. pretty damn sure he never met a goblin.

[myswtghst]

This is probably the argument that makes me roll my eyes the hardest. I mean, the dude could imagine giant talking trees, but he couldn't imagine an equal number of male and female primary / secondary characters?

[spyral_path]

It's been a long time since I've read them so I could be wrong, but I can only remember 3 female characters in the book version of lotr and in the hobbit, I can only remember women being referred to but never actually being part of the story. The utter lack of females in the film version of the hobbit made me wonder how gobblons, trolls, orcs and even dwarves reproduced.