May be a stupid question, but I last read the LOTR about 15 something years ago, and even then I just confined myself to the main ‘tale’ as it where and didn’t delve into the appendices, etc.
I can’t recall if the Ent Wives being missing was dragged from the novels, but presuming it was, is there anything in the books thaht explains what hapenned to them?
Just a curiosty question, as I had occasion recently to watch the movies again while home sick the other week.
IANATolkien expert, but I don’t think they ever get found.
I think there was something about ages ago the males and females had become separated and many more ages since, Treebeard was the last of either that he knew of. There’s actually something of a problem because, unless Ents have a lifetime in tens of millennia, it’s true that a lot of trees live for centuries and even a couple of millenia, but so do Elves so they should know as much about the Ents as Treebeard.
No, we don’t know what happened to them. We really don’t.
Sob.
They went back to their roots.
I’m sorry.
The Elves were the ones that started talking to everything. But that was back in the First age when they were new and found everything else interesting. Over time the elves became more focused inwards essentially ignoring thing outside themselves. So, it may well have been that the elves didn’t even notice the Entwives disappearance along with many other things outside their enclaves.
Treebeard is not the last of the ents, as he was able to call an Entmoot before assailing Isengard.
It’s hinted that, perhaps, the entwives are in the area of The Shire. Remember the guy at the Green Dragon teasing Sam because of his cousin claiming to have seen a tree walking? And then Treebeards asks if either Merry or Pippin might have seen the entwives, as that area is some place they would like.
I think Tolkien left it up to us to decide if that was, indeed, an entwife seen near The Shire.
If you stick to what Tolkien wrote for publication, it’s an unanswered and unanswerable question (although I think it’s strongly implied that they’re gone from this world).
If you delve into the professor’s letters, you’ll find “I think that in fact the Entwives have disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance.” (The Letters of JRR Tolkien, #144)
ETA: It’s possible to read this as a punishment for or consequence of defying the natural order of things and attempting to exert control beyond one’s appointed stature - the same urges that led to the downfalls of Melkor, Sauron, and Saruman. It’s also possible to see the Entwives purely as victims of events beyond their understanding.
I can’t add anything to TWDuke’s information.
However there is a haunting song that Treebeard sings, which suggests why the Ents have become separated:
In the willow-meads of Tasarinan I walked in the
Spring.
Ah! the sight and the smell of the Spring in Nan-
tasarion!
And I said that was good.
I wandered in Summer in the elm-woods of Ossiriand.
Ah! the light and the music in the Summer by the
Seven Rivers of Ossir!
And I thought that was best.
To the beeches of Neldoreth I came in the Autumn.
Ah! the gold and the red and the sighing of leaves in the
Autumn in Taur-na-neldor!
It was more than my desire.
To the pine-trees upon the highland of Dorthonion I
climbed in the Winter.
Ah! the wind and the whiteness and the black branches
of Winter upon Orod-na-Thön!
My voice went up and sang in the sky.
And now all those lands lie under the wave,
And I walk in Ambarona, in Tauremorna, in Aldalómë,
In my own land, in the country of Fangorn,
Where the roots are long,
And the years lie thicker than the leaves
In Tauremornalómeë.
Treebeard is one of the last of the original ents, who were woken by elves. He mentions two others, but one has become very treeish, and the other was injured by orcs and hides deep in the forest. Neither attends the Entmoot. All the other ents are the result of Ent & Entwife germination.
And yes, I always thought that was an Entwife mentioned in the beginning of FoTR. Not just the drunken ravings of a Boggie, no sir.
One of them went to Hollywood and became a big star.
You may have heard of her –
Mallorn Monroe
(D&R)
Didn’t she die from a Miracle Gro overdose?
This just drives me crazy. I read LOTR when I was a teen and I’m in my thirties now and the question of the Entwives is often in the back of my head. What happened to them? Where did they go? Why did they leave?
I started a thread on it some time ago and some of the Tolkien experts like What Exit came in and answered but I didn’t feel satisfied. I think it is a question that will plague me forever,
They wandered into a lovely, pastoral region of Northwestern Middle-Earth, where they settled in, and grew beautiful gardens. This lasted for many years, until a group of nasty, rotund little hairy-footed humanoids moved into their garden. The little fur-foots were overly infatuated with fireplaces, and chopped up the Entwives for firewood.
Anaamika, post #8 contains the author’s last word on the matter. Beyond that is fan fiction.
Yes, but it is wrong. I don’t mean wrong in the sense of incorrect, but wrong that an author introduces a whole race of people and then dumps half of them for convenience or to make a point or something…but never actually gets around to making that point and instead waxes eloquent about sailing down the river from Lothlorien on the way to Mordor and then stopping for fucking lunch!!!
I actually get mad over this issue. 
I understand that that’s getting a little too upset over it. I’ll go in the corner and sit quietly now.
How can you “dump half of them” if you never even meet them? By that standard, 95% of the population of Middle Earth has been dumped.
Many of them are introduced moreso than the Entwives, too.
I also think you are offbase on “convenience” (Since it would seem to me to be more convenient to just have said nothing, so that people like you wouldn’t get their hackles up ) and probably “to make a point”; I’d say that the Entwives are missing for the simple reason that it makes good story.
They’re not “dropped”; There are simply times when it is more interesting to -not- explain something. It makes the audience wonder. Which clearly you are doing, so…mission accomplished for The Professor, I wager.
AS an aside, DC Comics adapted/ripped off the Ents/Entwives story for the story of the origins of the Guardians of the Universe (Green Lantern’s employers). A plague activated by contact between the sexes forced them to divide into separate male and female societies, with children conceived and born in vitro (and the birth rate declining anyway). Being basically immortal, the men and women went their own way went their own way over thousands of years, and when the men (who had become the Guardians by this point) went to look for their female counterparts, they discovered that they were gone.
Then again, though, there are known to be Ent-like creatures in the vicinity of the Shire, that are not Entwives, too. Old Man Willow, in the Old Forest, seems to be in the process of “waking up” (or “going to sleep”), so maybe what Sam’s cousin saw was something akin to him (or even Willow himself, before he settled down where he is now).
And it was correct of Tolkien to not explain everything. The real world still has mysteries, so it adds verisimilitude for a fantasy world to have a few mysteries, too. The fate of the Entwives is one of those.
They made like trees… and LEFT!
Wait, that doesn’t work at all.