And the English Middle Ages are full of women of incredible power…Queen Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine (who wore armor to the crusades), Joan of Arc, who took up arms for the French against the English, Margaret Beaufort, who pretty much put the Tudors on the throne. Cecily Neville.
And then we get to the Tudors - no one can deny Mary I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and obviously Elizabeth were forces to be reckoned with - regardless of what you think of their actions.
And Tolkien would have grown up with the near History of the closest thing we have ever seen to an Emperor of the World - Queen Victoria - a woman who survived eight assassination attempts.
And going back the other direction…there is Boudicca.
Tolkien was a man of his time - and rather conservative in many ways. But we can’t say “well, he just was unaware of the power of women to affect world events” - no educated Englishman can claim that.
Who remains a serving-man his entire life (while he achieves some status in the Shire in the end, he’s never the equal of the upper-class hobbits). He is of a different class than Frodo (or Merry or Pippin), and we (and he) are never allowed to forget it.
Yes, Tolkien could have been better about women. But his classism is worse. Even as a kid (maybe 11, 12?) reading LOTR, it struck me.
That’s one reason I said “to some extent”, but I agree that wasn’t clear in my post. While the assumed class system is heavily visible in Sam, he is himself most definitely a visible character; and Rose is one of the few named women in the book.
I think this does very likely fit in with Tolkien making assumptions from his own life, though: a personal servant, quite possibly one with a wife, would have been a relationship he was familiar with.
Eh, while the Mayor of Michel Delving might have less status than the Took-Thain or the Master of Buckland (Pippen and Merry’s eventual positions), it seems to me that that still puts him at a higher status than anyone else in the Shire, including the gentry like the Sackville-Bagginses.
Not by the standards of the English class system. Where the Lord Mayor of London might be a commoner, and is looked down upon by the gentry. You see this with Pride and Prejudice where Sir William Lucas is granted a knighthood as a result of his mayoralty of Meryton, but is looked down on by the social climbing Bingley sisters.
Disagreed. I don’t have the books handy, but Sam’s very language when he’s addressing Frodo is evidence of his internalization of his class inferiority. Despite the fact that Sam was the one who got the job done, every day, no matter how shitty the journey, how hard the circumstances, without any whining or complaining. Or ever being tempted, for that matter.
I don’t think I can dig up a copy today, unfortunately. Another day, perhaps, if this thread is still alive then.
But it was striking to me even as a kid. It actually made me angry.*
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but somewhere in The Two Towers, I stopped and talked with my daughter about Sam’s constant use of the word “master” when addressing Frodo. It isn’t out of character for him, but every time I read that word from one friend to another, it creeped me out. My daughter and I agreed that I’d replace “Master” with “My friend” or something similar, and it definitely improved the book for both of us.
I tried other replacements, like “Sweetie” and “Pumpkin,” but they didn’t work. And I kept Gollum’s “Master,” because the word’s connotations of cringing and servile behavior work well for him in a way that just didn’t work for me for Sam.
By no means is that what @Thorny_Locust implied. Yes, Eowyn admires Aragorn, maybe has a crush on him. But her goal is not to tag along after a man, it is to be a spear maiden and do great deeds.
“Sir,” maybe? The relationship between Frodo and Sam was modeled after the relationship between a military officer (in the British Army in WWI) and his military servant (Samwise Gamgee - Wikipedia).
Some people (especially those who are going by the movies) seem to think of Frodo and Sam as examples of BFF’s, and that Sam’s devotion to Frodo was motivated by friendship. But IIUC they weren’t really friends prior to the events of LOTR: their relationship was, if not master/servant, at least employer/employee.
I don’t know anything about the English class system, but I’m not sure this example quite fits the point.
Miss Bingley calls the assembly “insipid” at the ball at Lucas Lodge, but that seems to encompass all of Meryton upper-crust society in general, not just the Lucas family. The Bingley sisters seem unimpressed with essentially everyone in Meryton except perhaps the eldest Miss Bennet. They never make any specific comment about Sir William himself.
You’re definitely correct that prior to the events, Sam is Frodo’s servant. And you’re right that throughout the events, neither Sam nor Frodo thinks about renegotiating this basic relationship. But I’d say that a very deep and loving friendship develops between these two, and that purely from a selfish perspective, removing the constant references to the master/servant dynamic makes it a lovelier relationship, even if that’s not what Tolkien intended.
I don’t have my copy handy, but I thought there was an incident fairly early in the journey where the hobbits are waking up, and Merry/Pippin tells Sam to get a move on and get breakfast going, and Sam jumps up and says something like “Yes, sir, right away, sir”, and Frodo tells Merry/Pippin to knock it off and get his own damn breakfast, or words to that effect.
I agree that the hobbits portray a definitely romantic and nostaligic view of class relationships in Edwardian Britain, and that when Tolkien was writing those relationships were mostly gone. The Shire is similarly a romantic/nostalgic view of rural living pre-WWI, also long gone when the books were written. Wodehouse had a similar rose-colored view of that period. There are plenty of works with a more cynical/realistic view of the class relationships of the time, of course.
She doesn’t just admire Aragorn, she’s in love with him. Aragorn discusses it with Eomer, Eowyn and Faramir discuss it.
I think my interpretation is backed by the fact that, later in the book, when Eowyn finds reciprocated love she also loses interest in being a spear maiden.
Yes, she wants out of the house, she wants to be included in the songs and stories. But she wants to go with Aragorn specifically because she’s in love; and once she’s in love with someone else, she drops right back into a standard women’s role; which is phrased as finally understanding her own heart.
Faramir to Eowyn:
“Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fearor any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Eowyn, do you not love me?”
Then the heart of Eowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.
“I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun,” she said; “and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie wh the great Riders, and take joy only in the songs of slaying. I wil be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.” And again she looked at Faramir. “No longer do I desire to be a queen,” she said.
Tolkien gives her that earlier great speech. But he doesn’t believe she means it. He doesn’t believe she’s ambitious to be a warrior, or to be a queen; or to vie with the men on what they think of as their own ground. He believes that what she really wants is a good marriage, and has misunderstood herself so drastically, partly due to the influence of Wormtongue, that she mistook this desire for the only other way she saw to get out of a bad situation.
I’ve always taken it that Eowyn was unnaturally desiring to go to war, because that’s what it took to fulfill the prophecy about the Witch-King. But once that was fulfilled, she could revert to her more natural role as wife.
To clarify - I meant Manwe or some divine creature inspired her to desire a warlike life, not that she wanted to be the one to fulfill the prophecy, which she obviously knew nothing about.
I figured that she’d gotten her glory. She killed the damn Witch-King. No greater glory could come to her, no matter how much shield-maidening she did.
Even after she killed the Witch-King, she still wanted to die in battle, until she fell in love with Faramir. From her conversation in the Houses of Healing:
‘It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden,’ answered Eowyn. ‘And those who have not swords can still die upon them. Would you have the folk of Gondor gather you herbs only, when the Dark Lord gathers armies? And it is not always good to be healed in body. Nor is it always evil to die in battle, even in bitter pain. Were I permitted, in this dark hour I would choose the latter.’
