# Tolkien and women **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** middle-earth, books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [August 3, 2021, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972 "2021-08-03T15:25:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/101 "2021-08-04T19:54:43Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > My guess is he probably doesn’t have a dearth of female characters due to lack of confidence in his ability to write a female. Note that unlike many modern fantasy writers, Tolkien is not writing form a single POV with an omniscient narrator who knows every detail of a person’s inner monologue. But it’s not just about internal monologue. I think he would have struggled to describe the kinds of conversations a mixed-gender group would have had, how Female Merry and Female Pippen would have talked to the Ents, for example. Or how a female Sam and Frodo would have expressed their bond. Or, reaching back, how a female Bilbo’s insecurity and longing for adventure would have manifested. I’m not saying he considered it and lost confidence, but just that when he imagined people talking to each other, they were men talking to men, because that was his world. He didn’t think to write about women any more than he thought to include elements of Russian folklore in his stories: your imagination creates based on the experiences you feed into it, and he hadn’t had those experiences. If he’d been raised among women, if he’d been sent to a pair of nuns instead, had sisters, taught in a girl’s school with women faculty, he would have been a very different writer. Instead, he lived in a world full of priests and dons. Of course he wrote about men interacting with other men. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/102 "2021-08-04T19:59:52Z")
Right, the guy could invent entire languages, but couldn’t conceive a women character interesting enough to replace the thousands of descriptions of trees. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/103 "2021-08-04T20:00:52Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > …right. They are like that because Tolkien made them like that. If he could make them tiny, he could have made the women as strong as the men. If he could give them hairy feet, he could have made the women stronger than the men. Yes, we know for sure that he could have created a race where the women were as physically strong as the men. We know that he could do that because he did. And what was the result? We human readers assume without evidence that all of the members of that race are men. Earlier in this thread, people mention that the major characters in The Hobbit were all male. But we don’t actually know that. IIRC, of the thirteen dwarves, pronouns or other gender indicators are only specified for nine of them. And even among those who are referred to as “he”, it’s possible that that’s just other characters misgendering them, and that they just don’t consider misgendering to be worth correcting. That’s possible because Dwarven society is radically different from Human society, as it must be, for a society where the differences between the genders are insignificant. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/104 "2021-08-04T20:04:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Earlier in this thread, people mention that the major characters in The Hobbit were all male. This feels like a side-issue. We’re mostly talking about, and I was clearly talking about, Fellowship of the Rings. As I recall, the gender of all 9 members was specified. Even in the Hobbit, you’re going for a mighty big reach to suggest that there was misgendering going on and that dwarves don’t consider that worth correcting. I’m all about the fanwank, but c’mon. And out of curiosity, can you point me to the place in The Hobbit or LotR where it’s specified that dwarven “women were as physically strong as the men”? I don’t remember that line. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/105 "2021-08-04T20:05:29Z")
Out of thirteen largely interchangeable characters, there were three who were so minor that they didn’t get pronouns - those _might_ have been women. That’s some solid representation right there. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/106 "2021-08-04T20:06:35Z")
I’m skeptical that even a modern female would know how a female hobbit would speak to a male hobbit. There’s a lot tied up in our cultural norms and backgrounds that affect our interpersonal interactions, and that will affect interpersonal interactions between the genders. There’s interpersonal interactions today that would be perfectly allowed by a man towards a woman, that in other places and other times, would get you actually killed, for example. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/107 "2021-08-04T20:06:43Z")
“Couldn’t” is a weird word here. I mean, if he’d been interested in women, and women’s lives, the way he was interested in languages and linguistics, well then, yes, of course he could have. But everything we know suggests that he wasn’t particularly interested in women or the society of women. In his time and place, that was pretty normal, and his upbringing exacerbated that. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/108 "2021-08-04T20:11:34Z")
> [@Chingon](#): > > Right, the guy could invent entire languages, but couldn’t conceive a women character interesting enough to replace the thousands of descriptions of trees. Hey there! His wonderful descriptions of trees and forests are one of the things I love about his work. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/109 "2021-08-04T20:14:06Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > And out of curiosity, can you point me to the place in The Hobbit or LotR where it’s specified that dwarven “women were as physically strong as the men”? I don’t remember that line. Here’s something. From Appendix A of LotR: > [@](#): > > Dis was the daughter of Thrain II. She is the only dwarf-woman named in these histories. Let’s pause for a second and think about whether we’re gonna look to dwarves to see how good Tolkien is at representation in the nonhuman races. > [@](#): > > It was said by Gimli that there are few dwarf-women, probably no more than a third of the whole people. They seldom walk abroad except at great need. They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other people cannot tell them apart. And that’s about all we find out about dwarven women: they don’t go out among other folks very often, there aren’t many of them, and they look like dwarf-men (and therefore like the males of other species) to such an extent that others don’t think that dwarven women exist. I’m really not sure why this would be held up as a counterexample to Tolkien’s lack of strong female characters in any way, shape, or form. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/110 "2021-08-04T20:19:20Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I’m skeptical that even a modern female would know how a female hobbit would speak to a male hobbit. I’m not really following this. Female hobbits speak to male hobbits in whatever way the author wants. If he’d decided that mixed-gender hobbit groups communicate entirely in rhymed couplets, or through charades, or with loving sarcasm in every sentence, that would’ve happened. Instead, even when Sam marries Rose, Rose doesn’t get to say anything. At best, Sam reports to Frodo a single line that Rose said to him. Frodo never talks with his best friend’s wife, nor is he in the room with them that we see. Tolkien just didn’t write that. And I, and others, think that the book is poorer for having so few female characters. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/111 "2021-08-04T20:25:22Z")
Is it worth considering how females in the world were regarded and treated vs his main characters? The Fellowship was nine people. No women but I am not sure you can draw a conclusion about the author’s view, or the world view of the book towards women from that. There is a medieval vibe to the whole thing. We do not really expect women to be running around with swords and fighting. Not to mention, Tolkien was a creature of his age. Women’s lib was kind of a new idea back then. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/112 "2021-08-04T20:29:39Z")
I probably phrased it badly–I guess what I really mean is, say if Tolkien **did** write a lot of dialogue and interactions between female and male Hobbits. Let’s say modern women universally find it off-putting and say “that isn’t how women would communicate.” Well, the thing is–in a fantasy world their being real life human women, isn’t any special expertise in how non-real, non-earth dwelling, Hobbits might speak in intergender communications. This goes back to my point that I don’t think Tolkien failed to write women because he was “afraid he wouldn’t get it right”, he’s basically the Omnipotent God of Middle-Earth, he’s not going to get social interactions “wrong.” He might create story scenes that are boring, uninteresting, or poorly written, which would be defects of writing. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/113 "2021-08-04T20:34:09Z")
I didn’t say he was afraid, I said he didn’t think to. Those sorts of interactions weren’t part of his world or his process. Even in fantasy, people write what they know. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/114 "2021-08-04T20:38:16Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I probably phrased it badly–I guess what I really mean is, say Tolkien **did** write a lot of dialogue and interactions between female and male Hobbits. If he’d done that, we’d be having a different conversation. There are certainly ways he could have done that that would’ve gotten on my nerves, sure–but that’d be a different conversation. He _didn’t_ write a lot of dialogue and interactions between female and male hobbits. He hardly included female hobbits at all. That’s what I see as a weakness. And, to quote MandaJo: > [@MandaJo](#): > > I’m not saying he considered it and lost confidence, but just that when he imagined people talking to each other, they were men talking to men, because that was his world. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/115 "2021-08-04T20:38:59Z")
I edited that post to correct what was a typo. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/116 "2021-08-04T20:40:09Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Not to mention, Tolkien was a creature of his age. Women’s lib was kind of a new idea back then. Of course he was a creature of his age. And if I were assigning him a letter grade in women’s lib, I might want to grade on a curve. Or if we’re wanting to understand _why_ his books are flawed in this manner, it’s helpful to look at his context. But assigning him a letter grade isn’t something I’m interested in doing. And understanding his historical context is different, in my opinion, from understanding the strengths and weaknesses of his book. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/117 "2021-08-04T20:41:03Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I edited that post to correct what was a typo. Heh–I think you added a typo instead. No worries, I think your meaning is clear. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/118 "2021-08-04T20:41:20Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Tolkien just didn’t write that. And I, and others, think that the book is poorer for having so few female characters. I think this is a valid opinion, just one I don’t share, for what it’s worth. Not every book needs both genders present to my tastes. Some people won’t read books that don’t have both. I don’t think either is right or wrong. I think a story like Wheel of Time would not have been the same without both genders, their romantic entanglements, and Jordan also created a lot of strong matriarchal societies in his world–he didn’t typically fall into the trap of having female characters who **only** exist to satisfy a need for the male protagonist to have a love interest. Although I actually find some of Jordan’s portrayals of women to be fairly infantilizing, and some of his interminable chapters that focused on the female characters dragged the books out too much. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/119 "2021-08-04T20:41:54Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > The main justification I have for Tolkien’s lack of representation is his conceit that he is not writing fiction but translating an older work primarily written by two male hobbits. > > However, that doesn’t make it not a flaw. He could have included more women. There is nothing inherent about the story that requires it to be mostly about men. He could have, say, found a diary by a learned woman, or added some stuff from a women’s cult. There are ways to do it. Or he could have had his two male hobbits include more women in their writings. He made up the hobbits. He could have made up gender equalitarian hobbits, or for that matter non-equalitarian hobbits who paid more attention to women. Considering his life and his background, it would have been somewhat surprising if he had; but I really don’t see how you can blame this one on the hobbits. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > it’s facetious to pretend pre-modern European society was not strongly patriarchal, and that the written works that have survived from those times aren’t extremely exclusionary of females. The written works that have survived very likely exaggerate the patriarchalism. It’s a fairly common pattern: in any given generation, there are some women doing x – fighting, running businesses, writing much-praised poetry, whatever. A minority, but some. And a whole lot more women working along husbands and fathers and brothers and other women, doing much of the same ordinary day to day work that the men are doing. And in the next generation, or the one after, or the one after that, the people writing the history books . . . just don’t mention them. All history writers leave a lot of people out; not everybody fits in the book. All of them make selections. Their assumptions about who matters, whether conscious or unconscious assumptions, warp the results. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > –if you want to believe pre-modern Europe was a world in which women mostly ran things and did most of the fighting, and not one where virtually all of those women had no say in government and rarely had roles outside of farm and family life I don’t think anybody’s claiming the former. But it was very likely somewhere more in the middle than what Tolkien’s showing. And women were very often present even when they weren’t considered the actors. Histories (see above) of war rarely discuss the camp followers, but they were there. > [@DrDeth](#): > > She said nothing of the sort. I don’t have the book handy, and all the quotes I can find stop just before that point. But yes, in effect she does. I’ll try to find it; but it may take a while. > [@MandaJo](#): > > when he imagined people talking to each other, they were men talking to men, because that was his world. He didn’t think to write about women any more than he thought to include elements of Russian folklore in his stories: your imagination creates based on the experiences you feed into it, and he hadn’t had those experiences. > [@MandaJo](#): > > I didn’t say he was afraid, I said he didn’t think to. Those sorts of interactions weren’t part of his world or his process. Even in fantasy, people write what they know. Quoting both of the above for agreement. Tolkien wanted to write other species, so he thought about them. He didn’t think about male/female relationships, because he thought he already knew about them: but what he already knew was limited in ways he took for granted. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/120 "2021-08-04T20:43:56Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Although I actually find some of Jordan’s portrayals of women to be fairly infantilizing, and some of his interminable chapters that focused on the female characters dragged the books out too much. FWIW I got like 70 pages into the first _Wheel of Time_ and said good lord what is this nonsense and put it down. There are definitely fantasies that do lots of things better or worse. Tolkien has some absolutely killer action sequences, and the relationship between Sam and Frodo (especially if you get past the constant “Master!” business) is one of the best male friendships I’ve ever read, and I wish I had a male friend as dear to me as Sam is to Frodo. And his descriptive passages are lovely. My criticism of his gender dynamics in no way takes away from the joy I get from his strengths as a writer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972.md?page=7)