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

[apricotflower]

As a long time Tolkien fan (although mostly as a child and teen) I must embarrasedly admit it wasn't until a friend pointed it out a couple of weeks ago that I noticed that there are, in fact, no women in The Hobbit (the book). Mentioned, sure, but no characters. Although there are other women in the entire universe.

I would love to see a remake with Bilbo as a woman. Maybe even Gandalf too. Or Thor(in)a - the dwarf princess intent on retaking her ancient home from the dread dragon! That, I would actually really like to see/read.

[pleasure_past]

gandalf's glowy love interest?

Am I forgetting someone or do you mean Galadriel? Because lol.

[tn_tiger]

There's a female character in LoTR that we've overlooked so far, and that's Shelob.

[starblydsneetch]

Shelob! She should eat bilbo and take over the adventure herself.

[tn_tiger]

Yeah, that was kind of my point.

[nerdanel]

While I agree with everything said here, I blame Tolkien much more than Jackson, and as a book purist (i.e., someone who hates film directors taking sweeping liberties with the original text), it would have felt awkward and artificial to me to invent major female characters and insert them into Tolkien's script. I prefer that films reflect the author's original vision and storyline. I don't fault Jackson for staying mostly true to Tolkien's writings in TH and LOTR. I do fault Tolkien for a gravely flawed and arguably sexist manuscript that marginalized and excluded women.

(PS If characters had been added to the film inconsistently with Tolkien's vision, ideally this would also have included people of color, both men and women, too.)

[pleasure_past]

Disclaimer: I like Tolkien. My standards are low like that.

Can I beat anyone who thinks that "the times" is a valid excuse for not writing women over the head with The Chronicles of Narnia? It's a contemporary work in the same genre, and even though it's still sexist as fuck the male to female ratio is pretty much 50/50 in main character. Tokien has no excuse. (And don't even get me started on the "But he only knew two women irl!" excuse. He probably didn't know a single fucking elf irl and that never stopped him.)

That said, there are much better articles than this one women in Tolkien's world. You miss a lot of nuance by only watching the movies--and no, it's not redeeming nuance. I think Galadriel, Arwen, and Eowyn were handled considerably better in the movies than they were in the books.

[trista_zevkia]

I love Tolkein, but admittedly haven't spent much time in dissecting the gender roles of escapism literature. Early scifi tends to desensitize a person to that sort of thing

[pleasure_past]

Okay, look, you have been defensive as fuck all over this post. I really have no interest in discussing this with someone who takes it as personally as you seem to.

Your characterization of Susan (Who isn't the eldest by a long shot, ftr. Seriously why is everyone in this post acting as though there is only one Narnia book?) as a "snotty brat" is ridiculous and unsupported by canon, but it doesn't matter because this isn't actually a post about Lewis. It's about Tolkien. And even though I've already admitted that the Narnia books can be sexist as fuck, Lewis at least went to the trouble of putting women into his books, which is the entire point here. And Lewis was also a WWI vet and he was writing for another wartime and he is basically proof that all of the excuses that people come up with for Tolkien's marked refusal to write women are bullshit

[trista_zevkia]

I'm not trying to be defensive, I was hoping to have a discussion. Though I often get that so clearly I'm not communicating well. I'm not trying to excuse Tolkien or myself, I'm just trying to say this is what I know. I thought, that as a self proclaimed Tolkien fan, you might know if I was wrong about the context.

I've read the books, yes, both Narnia and Tolkien. I've also read books and discussions of Tolkien where these things come up, histories of the Hobbits and such. I could find those references if I could get into the attic where my college stuff is stored, but I can't at the moment. Susan comes off as a snotty brat to me, just as what I said came off as defensive to you. Lewis, I think, said somewhere, maybe through a character in one of the later books or maybe in an interview, that she lost interest in Narnia when she discovered 'makeup and boys' so I'm not just making that up.

My apologies.