# 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:** 8
**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, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/141 "2021-08-04T21:50:03Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > …how does a depiction of one giant spider differ from a depiction of any other, anyway? Ungoliant is bigger? (I got nothing really) ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/142 "2021-08-04T21:55:26Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I realized this when I saw Le Guin at the top of your list, I’ve always thought of her as either a science fiction author or “supernatural” fiction LeGuin is such a significant figure it is hard to argue about what is her most important work, but I’m pretty sure her best-selling (and still very highly praised) are the [Earthsea series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthsea). They’re pretty much straight high fantasy. I think Jack Vance deserves a good nod here as well. ---
**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, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/143 "2021-08-04T21:56:29Z")
I read Earthsea in 6th grade. One of the series that got me in to reading. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2021, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/144 "2021-08-04T23:44:32Z")
It was Tolkien & Heinlein first but Earthsea, The Chronicles of Prydain by Alexander and various John Christopher books really gave me the reading bug. Heck I went from being a below grade reader in 6th grade to 12th grade reader by 7th. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/145 "2021-08-05T00:54:50Z")
Here’s a review of a scholarly book on women in the life and works of Tolkien: [https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=journaloftolkienresearch#:~:text=Even%20more%20significant%20in%20Rateliff’s,which%20as%20Rateliff%20notes%20was](https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=journaloftolkienresearch#:~:text=Even%20more%20significant%20in%20Rateliff's,which%20as%20Rateliff%20notes%20was) ---
**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 5, 2021, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/146 "2021-08-05T03:26:35Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > While it’s possible historic patriarchy is exaggerated, we actually have really strong historical records from like 1700+ and things like William Blackstone saying things to the effect of “women have no legal existence outside of their husbands” that suggests up until quite recently women had virtually no agency in society by any modern standards. I find it unlikely it was dramatically different in the Middle Ages, the era of history that directly lead into the times of Blackstone’s writing Lack of legal agency doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Not having the legal right to the results of one’s own work, and/or not being given any credit for it, doesn’t mean that the work wasn’t done. Even aside from the fact that he’s writing fantasy, with no need to follow any specific this-world history (let alone history that in the world of Middle Earth wouldn’t have happened yet): Tolkien isn’t positing, and noticing, a system that disadvantages women, except partially in the one case of Eowyn. He’s just writing a world in which women, for the most part, aren’t there; and/or aren’t doing anything worth noticing. He notices Eowyn, I think, because she’s the daughter of a king and the sister of his heir. In that speech, one of the things she says is “But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman.” Tolkien isn’t saying the situation’s unfair to women in general: he’s saying it’s unfair to this specific woman, precisely because she’s exceptional. The serving-women are invisible, except to be dismissed. To some extent the serving-men are also, of course – one of the things Tolkien was used to was a fairly rigid class system and whoo boy does that show – but the men are at least present, shouting and waving their spears. The women are for the most part invisible. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I realized this when I saw Le Guin at the top of your list, I’ve always thought of her as either a science fiction author or “supernatural” fiction (ala Stephen King I guess, who I also don’t consider a fantasy writer, but on reflection that is probably a bias as well); but it’s quite likely I think of her as not a fantasy writer because in my mind fantasy is pulp, and I don’t view her stuff as pulp so I naturally gravitate to think of it as science fiction or another type of fiction. There is probably no intrinsic reason you couldn’t view it as fantasy, just in my own mind I’d never categorized it like that. LeGuin wrote in a number of genres, as well as in mixes of them (what, precisely, is The Left Hand Of Darkness?). Some of what she wrote is clearly fantasy. She also wrote about fantasy, and about the seriousness and importance of it, including in children’s literature – you might look up some of her essays. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/147 "2021-08-05T03:30:14Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > He notices Eowyn, I think, because she’s the daughter of a king and the sister of his heir. Technically, she’s Theoden’s niece, though after her parents died, Theoden raised her and her brother as his own. Theoden’s son and heir, Theodred, had died just before the Rohirrim make their first appearance in _The Two Towers_. ---
**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 5, 2021, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/148 "2021-08-05T03:30:57Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Technically, she’s Theoden’s niece Whoops! forgot that. Thanks for correction. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/149 "2021-08-05T03:54:22Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > He’s just writing a world in which women, for the most part, aren’t there Quite literally so in the case of the Entwives > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > LeGuin wrote in a number of genres, as well as in mixes of them (what, precisely, is The Left Hand Of Darkness?). Technically science fiction, but with a fantasy feel? In a class I took (for fun) on fantasy literature, we read both _The Left Hand of Darkness_ and _A Wizard of Earthsea_. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > She also wrote about fantasy, and about the seriousness and importance of it, including in children’s literature – you might look up some of her essays. Amen. If you can find her essay collection [The Language of the Night](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_of_the_Night) in your library, check it out. Alas, it’s out of print and used copies are expensive. ---
**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 5, 2021, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/150 "2021-08-05T04:15:44Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Technically science fiction, but with a fantasy feel? Spoilering, just in case: Most of it’s science fiction. But they’ve got working precognition, done from a trance state. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > If you can find her essay collection [The Language of the Night](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_of_the_Night) in your library, check it out. Alas, it’s out of print and used copies are expensive. Hmmm. I’ve got one. Not in great condition, though – been read too often, including in the bathtub. (well, me in the bathtub, not the book. They do get kind of damp around the edges, though.). ---
**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 5, 2021, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/151 "2021-08-05T04:37:32Z")
It’s not cheap, but there are a lot of copies available on abebooks. If your library doesn’t have it you can get a copy. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/152 "2021-08-05T06:20:51Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > > LeGuin wrote in a number of genres, as well as in mixes of them (what, precisely, is The Left Hand Of Darkness?). > > Technically science fiction, but with a fantasy feel? It’s straight-up science fiction to me - even the not-physically-possible thing @thorny_locust mentions in that spoiler is as much a SciFi trope as rockets and rayguns. Something like _Rocannon’s World_ is more what I would think of as “mixed”, with the swords and gnomes. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/153 "2021-08-05T06:34:49Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I find it unlikely it was dramatically different in the Middle Ages Why would you say that? There’s a _very_ sharp social change between the High Middle Ages and the 1750s, as much if not more dramatic as that between the 1700s and the present day. The Renaissance, The Enlightenment, the Reformation, 2nd Agricultural Revolution, the decline of Marianism in Western Europe, the elevation of the nation state, imperialism, increased urbanization…the list goes on. You think all of that happened and _didn’t_ have an impact on gender dynamics? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/154 "2021-08-05T07:35:39Z")
I have belonged to two societies that have run conferences and published papers about Tolkien for a long time. I first read _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of the Rings_ in 1969. I joined the Mythopoeic Society in 1972 and went to my first Mythcon (their annual conference) in 1977. I have remained in that society since then and have gone to most of their Mythcons since then (and chaired one of them). I joined the Tolkien Society in 1987 and went to my first Oxonmoot (their main annual conference) in 1987. I have remained in that society since then and have gone to a fair amount of Oxonmoots and some of their other conferences since then. (To be exact, the Mythopoeic Society is an organization interested in all of the Inklings, not just Tolkien.) I have read a lot of the Tolkien books published after his death and a lot of the books about Tolkien’s works and his life. I don’t remotely claim to be a Tolkien scholar though. There are a lot of the members of both societies who know much more about Tolkien than me, even though most of the members of both societies are not professionally Tolkien scholars (and I’ve never remotely done anything professionally about Tolkien). I’ve read a lot of other fantasy and science fiction too, although again I don’t do anything professionally with it, This summer I attended online (since there were no in-person ones) meetings of both societies. The Mythopoeic Society’s one was this year’s Mythcon and the Tolkien Society’s one was their Summer Seminar. Both had some papers about Tolkien and current issues in diversity. In fact, the title of the Summer Seminar of the Tolkien Society was “Tolkien and Diversity”. Because of that title, there has been an immense amount of really nasty criticism of the Tolkien Society over this summer, basically from people saying, “How dare you suddenly turn woke?”. This is despite the fact that most of that criticism comes from people who never even heard of the Tolkien Society before. Anyway, there are a lot of people immensely well-read in Tolkien and many of them are thinking about things like his attitude towards women. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/155 "2021-08-05T07:58:49Z")
Are any of those papers online, and available to the public? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/156 "2021-08-05T08:21:21Z")
The papers that were read at the Mythopoeic Society’s and the Tolkien Society’s online conferences held this summer aren’t available online or in any printed form either. The people who read those papers are now reviewing them and rewriting them based on the comments they heard at the conferences. It will be a few months before they are published either online or in print. Back in post #144 I linked to a review of a book (which is a collection of papers by various people) on women in the lives and works of Tolkien. That’s as close as I can get to a list of some such works unless I want to spend the next few days going without sleep to compile a list of all the papers about this subject. ---
**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 5, 2021, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/157 "2021-08-05T12:46:29Z")
Do you, personally, have any takeaways from what you’ve read about Tolkien and women? ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/158 "2021-08-05T13:28:41Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > [@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. Here you go. “He” is Aragorn, “she” is Eowyn, obviously. Note that she is asking to accompany him on the Paths of the Dead, not just go with the Riders to Gondor. > A time may come soon,’ said he, ‘when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.’ > And she answered: ‘All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.’ > ‘What do you fear, lady?’ he asked. > ‘A cage,’ she said. ‘To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.’ > ‘And yet you counselled me not to adventure on the road that I had chosen, because it is perilous?’ > ‘So may one counsel another,’ she said. ‘Yet I do not bid you flee from peril, but to ride to battle where your sword may win renown and victory. I would not see a thing that is high and excellent cast away needlessly.’ > ‘Nor would I,’ he said. ‘Therefore I say to you, lady: Stay! For you have no errand to the South.’ > ‘Neither have those others who go with thee. They go only because they would not be parted from thee - because they love thee.’ Then she turned and vanished into the night. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/159 "2021-08-05T13:44:42Z")
Not much to say here aside from I consider it an omission more than a flaw but I’ve no interest in investing time debating that. However, @Chronos you could use Queen Berúthiel (and heck a black cat for a pawn) as a black chess piece. ---
**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 5, 2021, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972/160 "2021-08-05T13:48:14Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Here you go. Thanks! I had just found it myself; but you saved me a lot of typing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-and-women/947972.md?page=9)