This doesn’t matter. When the subject of representation comes up in other works, the fact that something is coded either male or female is enough. If one of the Fellowship was a woman hobbit would she not count?
Your own cite says scholars aren’t in agreement on how to interpret some of those grave sites and mentions that there are few historical accounts of viking women warriors.
Hobbits would count. A random elf would count, too. But honestly, Galadriel is so above the rest of the characters that she kinda doesn’t count. She’s presented as a demigod who happens to manifest as an elf.
I can see that point of view. I still think she counts but it’s not like it really improves the level of representation, right?
Does Shelob count?
Hobbits are just short humans, they don’t possess innate magic and immortality.
Did you miss the part where I said “I don’t consider”? I choose to believe those interpretations, as I believe they’re more grounded in physical evidence, and line up better with historical accounts like Saxo’s.
Even in the modern era, when battles aren’t fought by literal strength of arms and the military is a relatively safe occupation, and in the enlightened US, the military is still over 80% male (between 82% and 86%, depending on whether you count reserves). And Lord of the Rings is set in an era when a warrior needed a strong sword arm, and when a war could kill off half of a country’s fighting population. And it’s mostly focused on those fighting a war. No surprise, then, that most of the characters are men. To have a significant female representation, you need either a story that’s focused on something other than war, or you need it to be set in a society where women would go to war in greater numbers.
You know, I think if it’s not a humanoid it probably shouldn’t count. But she used to be more humanoid right? Maybe she should count. That’s not a particular hill I’m willing to die on though.
Usually I hear your argument from those defending their favorite fandom from criticism that it isn’t diverse enough. Apologist for Warhammer 40k’s lack of female diversity often point out that Orks are neither male or female as they are the product of spores making them a particularly advanced and very violent fungi of some type. Critics of 40k’s lack of diversity point out that Orks are often referred to as “boyz” and are coded male at every opportunity meaning that they are male. Galadriel is coded as a woman and that’s really all that matters. There’s still a dearth of women characters though and it’s not like Galadriel is the focus.
Fair enough. Not that Tolkien had access to that archeological information.
…which is why the biggest heroes are 3-foot nothing midget sneak-thieves.
No, wait, that doesn’t sound right…
Presumably, though, even among hobbits, hobbit men are stronger than hobbit women. Put any of the hobbits in a toe-to-toe fight against, say, Boromir, and they’ll get their butts kicked, but they’re still the strongest the Shire has to offer.
What about the Valar?
IIRC nearly half of them were female and while a male was “most powerful” the female Valar were of no small importance or pushovers.
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Sure, but what does that matter when they are involved in a multi-species story? You can’t say it’s Ok to exclude human women because it’s a Man’s War, and then make excuses for how the pecks are allowed in because they’re swinging the D. Either strength of sword arm matters, regardless of participant, or it doesn’t.
But that’s a pantheon. They don’t have real personalities. More like forces of nature, modeled after other pantheons.
I would say, rather, that they are barely represented in LotR. If you were talking about the Silmarillion, I’d say they do have some personality. I’d also say the Silmarillion has a lot more female characters than the Lord of the Rings.
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.
If someone were to write a Tolkien-esque fantasy today, I would very much recommend they be more inclusive, and not mimic this particular aspect of Tolkien. Hence, from a modern perspective, it is a flaw.
Hobbits are like humans only tiny and with hairy feet. Why do you presume the males of this imaginary species are stronger than the females? And if they are, who made them that way?
Our Fellowship has:
-Aragorn, a swordfighter.
-Boromir, a swordfighter (I think a sword was his weapon)
-Legolas, an elven archer
-Gimli, a dwarven axe-fighter
-Gandalf, an angelic Maiar wizard
-Frodo, a hobbit without any particular martial training
-Samwise, a hobbit who specialized in the garden hoe
-Meriadoc, a hobbit who specialized in being sensible
-Pippin, a hobbit who specialized in pipeweed
I can see a case that Aragorn and Boromir were more plausible as men. All the rest were members of invented species, and if the males of their species are stronger than the females, it’s because Tolkien decided they were. None of the hobbits are especially good with swords (although obviously they get better as time goes on–still none of them are anything like professional soldiers even by the end), so even if male hobbits are stronger, that wouldn’t make any difference.
Could the book have worked just as well if Merry, Pippin, Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, and Gimli were women? I can hardly think why not. I can’t think of any plausibility issues raised, and given the lack of courtly love involving any of them, it wouldn’t break the rules of that specific subgenre. (I can see a case that Frodo and Sam should be the same gender, or else you couldn’t ship their characters, but other than that, I don’t think their genders are especially important).
Because they’re like humans only tiny and with hairy feet.
…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.
Referencing the strength of humans and implying that he therefore was sensible in not including female hobbits treats the relative strength as a fait accompli instead of as an artistic decision.
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. He doesn’t have to know the inner workings of his characters as much as say, a George Martin or Robert Jordan did. I think it goes back to his setting for Middle-Earth is pre-modern, it was inspired by his many years of study of pre-modern literature and mythology, and men are the dominant subjects of those worlds in which he was familiar with. We can all pick out random Brunnhilda’s and Grendel’s mother’s and such, but 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.
Exceptionally rare means it is a major exception to the norm for women to have roles in military leadership or governmental leadership in pre-Modern Europe. Viking women warriors are almost a comic book representation of what modern day feminists dream they could be, when the reality is we have almost no real evidence of them at all to help us understand if they were anything more than extremely rare aberrations and/or quasi-fictional. A few female bones buried with weapons doesn’t reality make.
But I’m actually fine just moving on–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’m fine with you believing that. I don’t actually need to correct every wrong opinion on the internet.
Of course it is. It’s the author’s choice of what subject matter they will choose to cover. Some writers specifically target genders with their writing. Their are authors who write with an exclusive intended audience of women, for example. Likewise there’s tons of authors who are not writing for the typical female audience.
…and there’s the straw.
However, let us not accept that Tolkien omitted strong female characters. By NO MEANS did he do so. However, yes, they did not have the major roles that the Nine did.
She said nothing of the sort.
is that really a hill you want to die on?