Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Racism of favourite authors

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #51
    Yeah, the online Tolkien encyclopedias are handy.

    The only other female characters are Tom Bombadril’s wife Goldberry and Rosie, Sam’s eventual wife.

    Eowyn suggests Tolkien wanted to show how women felt marginalized in that kind of society, but she doesn’t do much until the last book. Perhaps his wife or somebody told him he needed a three-dimensional female character. Arwen is barely a character at all.
    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 04-04-2020, 01:22.

    Comment


      #52
      Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is fairly well drawn, if still somewhat one dimensional.

      Comment


        #53
        Originally posted by Sits View Post
        Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is fairly well drawn, if still somewhat one dimensional.
        I’d forgotten her.

        Comment


          #54
          Heh, I was thinking of Lobelia last night, but yes although she's such a memorable poisonous shrew of a character she's such a briefly-appearing one (and, if I recall, we mostly 'see' her only second-hand, through Bilbo's opinion of her) I didn't think it was worth mentioning!

          Good call HP on Goldberry, though again she's a supporting character to a supporting character and Bombadil himself is such a weird diversion from the 'norms' of Middle-earth they obviously got axed from the film adaptation as well. A few scattered hobbits like Rosie are indeed about the sum total of named females anywhere otherwise.

          Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
          Eowyn suggests Tolkien wanted to show how women felt marginalized in that kind of society, but she doesn’t do much until the last book. Perhaps his wife or somebody told him he needed a three-dimensional female character.
          That's an interesting point, and yes the line of hers that's always stuck with me is "A cage" – when she wants to go to war Aragorn asks her what she fears, and we learn that it's not any earthly danger but the gilded cage she is expected to remain within. No matter how high-ranking, physically capable and committed she might be to the defence of her people, she knows that she's still stuck in a society where the men get to do stuff and the women get to stay behind and look pretty and keep house, even the king's daughter, though the world may crumble around them.
          So it's not like Tolkien was unaware of the situation he had written her into, but he clearly didn't feel his story world had the capacity to shift any of these societies out of it.

          Comment

          Working...
          X