Pretty much just Galadriel (through her mirror), unless I’m forgetting something.
It’s hard to say but I’d say no, except for Galadriel maybe. It’s more that they are incredibly wise, and can anticipate the unfolding of event to a greater degree than human people. Even the Mirror tells only possibilities about the future.
Also, (in the book) Elrond knows Aragorn very well, because Aragorn was actually fostered at Rivendell after his father was assassinated and Elrond was basically his fosterfather for 18 years. Aragorn is actually the Chieftain of his people, The Dunedain or Rangers of the North, though it seems he isn’t home much. In the extended edition of ROTK, Aragorn visits his mother’s grave at Rivendell and the inscription he reads from her grave is a reference to these events in the book, which are, again, told in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen and not in the main text.
I forgot to mention, that Frodo’s vision in the mirror, of the Shire burning, is also a reference to events ommitted from the movie, that I already talked about.
The thing that marks Tolkien’s work not sexist is that his female characters are varied and the ones that speak their minds or defy traditional roles do not suffer as a consequence. Also he has females do remarkable things without a bunch of remarks about how it fits with gender roles.
Eowyn tells Aragorn off then disobeys her king. Her fate? She faces battle as she wished. She triumphs, and thenshe gets to have as happy an ending as there is. He shows her as happy and celebrated. She’s going to spend her life with a Faramir who is a leader and a scholar and resisted the temptation of the ring. They have a challenge, namely taming the area Aragorn gave them to manage. She is not punished for defying stereotypes. She doesn’t have to live the rest of her life outcast. So many stories have women who defy traditional roles suffer some terrible fate.
Also it is clear Galadriel is the main ruler. Lothlorien is hers, preserved by her ring. This after she defied the Valar by returning to Middle Earth. She is in exile. In the end, the exile is lifted and she chooses to return to Valinor. Tolkien makes it clear her leadership in the walk across the grinding ice helped many. She was ambitious wanting to rule someplace of her own. She did that, and helped expelled a great evil. Then she got to retire. Again defiance is rewarded.
And let’s not forget Ioreth. She is a gossipy old woman, who is shown to have more wisdom than the scholars. “Old women keep mindful what the wise once needed to know.” Tolkien doesn’t sneer at women. He portrays them with as much individual character as he does his male characters. He puts value on women in traditional roles too. I see people sneer at Arwen’s pretty embroidery, but it meant a
l the difference in a major battle. No makeshift banner would have had the impact. Her creating it spoke volumes about her faith in him. What would he have done without it?he was rather busy from the time he received it to the time it was used. That Tolkien acknowledged how important woman’s work can be is another point that shows he wasn’t as sexist as some in this thread. The cloaks and lembas are other examples. Only a queen may bestow lembas. The lembas sustained the fellowship while the cloaks hid them. Without the gifts of females the story is far grimmer. And as others have said, we don’t know the sex of the dwarves.
Perhaps an insight into the mind of the man is a picture of the gravestone:
Luthien and Beren.
Now that I’m back at my books:
But I have to amend my statement. Thingol set up Beren for two of the greatest come-backs in literature. The one I was thinking of was the one from their next meeting, though that one only really makes sense in context.
Just to be clear, I agree with you (and the whole content of your post). Arwen’s banner was a key factor in the story. My comment was regarding the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen. Why does he love her? Other than her beauty and embroidery skills, Tolkein never says. Arwen is just a sketch of a character, much like her brothers. Was she unusually wise? Clever? Kind to puppies and children? Good sense of humor? A good cook? Could she shoot? Could she hunt? We just don’t know.
So true. Hello Again. The personalities of Elrond’s children is as much a mystery as what Radagst was up to during the War. Shame the book was so short. Seriously, those mysteries are part of the continuing appeal.
And I agree with u , Lee. Tolkien presents the women well for a story basically about males.
Still would have been nice to know more about Rosie
So Aragorn, just after learning his own ancestry was singing about the most beautiful elf ever and her living image is right there before him. And she bantered with him. I think that made a profound impression. It gave him something to aim for. He is a teen when the met and when the book starts he is 90. Over seventy yearsbhe spends becoming the man who may marry her.
I searched the board for the word “Tirian” and didn’t find the relevant thread. Can you point to it?
You won’t find it on a search - it’s a .sig, so it appears in any post where he had his signature enabled, whatever his .sig was at the time.
Beren’s great line the next time he met King Thingol was, more or less, “As promised, my right hand now has a Silmaril in it. Unfortunately, it’s no longer attached to my right arm” displays stump.
Why do many of the posters on this thread find it to be a blow against sexism that Galadriel was the ruler of her people? J.R.R was from England after all, and England has had strong queens in the past ( and although it was ruled by a king when he wrote the books, it was well known that Elizabeth would be queen). It doesn’t seem particularly unusual that one of his female characters would be a queen, nor does it say much about whether the elves in LOTR were sexist or not.
Galadriel wasn’t just a queen, and she particularly wasn’t just a queen of a parlimentary monarchy (as were Victoria, and Elizabeth II). She was one of the leaders of the rebellion against Valinor, born in the years of the Tree. In English, this makes her, say, the grandaughter of Adam and Eve, and she rebelled against Heaven, lost, and hiked across the polar ice caps to get to Middle-Earth, at which point she stayed with family, eventually met and wed her husband, established and ruled a new outpost, and eventually came to rule Lothlorien.
She is roughly equivalent to one of the great prophets in the bible (if not Moses, then Aaron), and the founding fathers of the US. Unfortunately, in this analogy, the US has now shrunk to roughly the size of Delaware, and is surrounded by neutral to hostile tribes that don’t know Lothlorien even exists.
I think that it is, at least in part, a literary shout out to Edmund Spencer’s Fairy Queen, which itself was a butt kissing of Elizabeth I