Or perhaps the opposite. It seems rather unlikely that Orcs have affectionate, egalitarian gender relations, but that doesn’t mean they need to be male dominated. Sure we don’t see female orcs, but that’s not necessarily because they’re beaten-down breeding animals; it could be because they’re huge hulking monsters that no male goes near unless forced. Perhaps Orcs reproduce by the female grabbing a handy male, screwing him until she gets pregnant, and then she rips his head off & eats him praying mantis style. Any Orc gets out of line? “Throw him to the women.” “NOOO!!”
Hmmm…perhaps the “Trolls” we see are actually Orc females…
Well, I’d let actual Tolkien scholars weigh in on whether he ever indicated any views on it, but I think early-to-mid 20th century Oxford was not exactly the most homophobic society ever. So, while it’s possible, I wouldn’t assume that Tolkien considered homosexuality to be depraved.
Interesting theory, Dr Watson, but fails utterly to account for how Azog could have sired Bolg and afterwards fought (and died) at the Battle of Dimrill Dale. :dubious:
I’d imagine (am no learned scholar on the matter) that Tolkien, as a conservative Catholic, believed that homosexuality was wicked, and a thing that people should not engage in. Can, however, easily see him acting perfectly civilly toward his gay colleagues and associates (“hate the sin, not the sinner”).
With Tolkien’s religious standpoint tending to see it as on the whole proper to avoid getting into sex-related matters; while it’s intriguing to speculate on the sexual and reproductive lives of the races of Middle-Earth, there isn’t a great deal in the “canon”, to feed that speculation. For what it’s worth, we have it – as in post #5 – from the Master, that there were male and female orcs, but “not much was known” concerning the female ones.
I read long ago, a work by a critic, on LOTR (the books). Said critic (I don’t remember either his name, or the title if his book) seemed an odd fellow, and rather a misanthropic one. On various matters arising from LOTR, he tended to engage in massive amounts of speculation based on rather little. I recall at one point, he proceeded to “compare and contrast” sex and reproduction among Hobbits, and Orcs. He saw the Hobbits as fulfilling the Catholic ideal – presumably with Tolkien’s great approval – of “orderly sexual restraint”: implying, having sex strictly-and-only for procreation (though often producing huge families). He envisaged the Orcs, on the other hand, engaging in utterly rampant sexual licence and promiscuity – engendering a huge surplus of Orcs, with their dens becoming overpopulated and starvation-ridden: this being much of the cause of Orc-hordes’ bursting out of their lairs to go and prey on and ravage, the lands of civilised people. One can easily read between the guy’s lines there, to see the Orcs – to the critic’s intense disapproval – being wildly and indiscriminately promiscuous, no doubt both heterosexually and homosexually (the latter both male-on-male and female-on-female): whether with mutual joy and satisfaction, or with cruelty, or some of each.
As said – a thoroughly eccentric commentator on Tolkien, who in deriving the above from the text of LOTR, would seem to be making an immense quantity of stew out of one oyster.
Elrond’s wife (Galadriel’s daughter) and the mother of Arwen (whose name I don’t recall) was captured by orcs and rescued by her sons. She never recovered and went to the West. Presumably she was traumatized, etc.
I don’t recall Tolkien dealing with gay stuff, other than the not really gay at all relationship between Sam and Frodo. However, his friend and contemporary and also fantasy writer, C.S. Lewis did address the subject in his autobiography Surprised by Joy. He indicated that he was aware that there were students in boarding school with such relationships, but he wasn’t one of them and didn’t know about it. This was in a somewhat disapproving tone, but if it had been in the US, the lack of further disapproval and the gentleness of it would have been highly suspect. In short, these academics and war veterans knew full well about it, didn’t admit to it, but disapproved in such mild terms as to be scolding people who got worked up about it.
If I recall correctly, Elrond’s wife was captured by orcs and tormented so badly that after being rescued she actually up and left her children and Middle Earth. Am I the only reader with a mind so warped that I thought she had been sexually abused as well as physically tortured?
I don’t think you’re the only one. The text describes her as having received a “poisoned wound,” which could easily be a metaphor for rape.
That said, the Greater Perfesser wrote someplace that elves would be able to voluntarily discorporate under such circumstances, head over to the Halls of Mandos when the situation seemed inevitable.
THAT said, I can’t believe that Finduilas and the other captive elf-maidens mentioned in Silmarillion were valued for their weaving skills.
(Gandalf): The Goblins are upon you! Bolg of the North is coming. O Dain! whose father you slew in Moria.
(Bolg’s father was Azog, btw, who had been DEAD for 150 YEARS when Thorin and Co. went to the Lonely Mountain – seriously, Peter Jackson, what rock were you hiding under that you didn’t KNOW this? Thanks for taking me out of the movie.)
Anyway, the point of the above is that orcs had fathers; it’s implausible that they didn’t also have mothers.
For quite a while, I was mildly puzzled about Azog and Bolg. With it being extremely clear that orcs are totally vile in all possible ways; I took it for granted that they do not “do” such basically civilised and decent things as families and parents : it must be that young orcs are left to grow up – if they manage to – in completely anarchic and chaotic circumstances, no doubt with a very high infancy-and-childhood mortality rate. It just seemed incongruous that they would in any way (as with A & B) have the concept of fathers-sons / parents-offspring.
I finally rationalised it after reading Harry Turtledove’s “Worldwar” books (lizard-like beings from Tau Ceti try to invade and subjugate Earth). Turtledove’s “Lizards” are uninterested in sex except during the brief mating-season frenzy: they then copulate indiscriminately, and the females are fertilized at random. The Lizards don’t need families – their young are much more self-sufficient from hatching, than human children. Thus, no Lizard knows or cares who their mother or father was. The one exception here, is the Lizards’ greatly venerated Imperial family – it is important to know the Emperor’s line of descent, so the Emperor has a harem of females reserved exclusively for himself. I take it that the orcs would have a rather similar system, wherein their royalty and aristocracy have ways of keeping track of who are whose father and son – the great mass of orcs, though, copulate and reproduce with complete randomness.
I sometimes feel that perhaps I ought to get a life…