Women in LOTR

[markedel]

Which aragorn do you dislike as it were? He's a little multifaceted.

[durin's bane]

the book one. he's kind of...headstrong and a bit of a show-off (don't hurt me! ^_^

and...er...as for my dwarf women statent, it was a joke. i've got a real dumb ense of humour, as you can tell ^_^;

[Nurvingiel]

I'm not mad about the Dwarf thing, I just thought I'd clear that up.

I like headstrong Aragorn personally. After all, it was Aragorn that really got the Hobbits to "shape up" in Bree.

~~~

But, we're massively off topic. This is the women in LOTR forum, right?


Let's talk about Eowyn, one of my favourite characters. When the army of Rohan was going to join Minas Tirith, Theoden left her in charge of taking all the refugees into the mountains, and safety.

I want to know who she left in charge went she left Rohan as well?

I bet it was another woman who Eowyn thought was very competant. So that means there's possibly another kick-ass woman in the story that simply wasn't described in this adventure.

On the same line of reasoning, there are many excellent women in Middle Earth.

Many of them do appear in this specific adventure of Lord of the Rings - Galadriel, Ioreth, Arwen, Eowyn, Rosie Cotton, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, Goldberry... the list goes on. I'd think of more but I have to go for lunch.

Middle Earth is so vast and detailed that there are definately many great women characters. It just so happens, from some odd imbalance of Nature, that not a lot of them come into this specific adventure.

[Nurvingiel]

Is this thread closed? No one's posted for ~2 weeks...

[Linarryl]

Legolas can NOT be a girl! He's the BEST ! I think since Borromir died anyways, Eowyn should be part of the fellowship! She can fight, she's pretty and she's noble! If not her, maybe an elven girl!

[Nurvingiel]

The Followship is fine the way it is, even Eowyn-less. Maybe in an alternate universe there's a fellowship that includes Eowyn.

That would be extremely cool!

[Christiana]

mabye a woman that would rather date a slug than guys.

[UnStashable]

The validity or purpose of that response escapes me.

[CrystalBolger]

u cant get rid of Boromir and replace him w/ Eowyn! wat would happen if Eowyn decided she wanted the Ring? she would scare me a heck of a lot more than Boromir! and she's way 2 in2 Aragorn. i can c that not ending well.

[Starr Polish]

Originally posted by Linarryl
Legolas can NOT be a girl! He's the BEST ! I think since Borromir died anyways, Eowyn should be part of the fellowship! She can fight, she's pretty and she's noble! If not her, maybe an elven girl!

What does being pretty have to do with anything?

[Nurvingiel]

Boromir has to be part of the Fellowship! He helped save them all on Caradrhas!

Fellowship, "Let's climb through a snow covered, dangerous, difficult mountain pass with absolutely no mountaineering gear whatsoever! Sounds like a plan."

Boromir, "Um, maybe we should bring some firewood... just in case."

Or something like that. I know all the tall people and Gimli contributed at some point, but Boromir was instrumental.

Boromir rules!

[Eowyn of Rohan]

No. No woman was necessary to be part of the Fellowship.

It's a radical feminist argument. One that frankly (as a woman) disgusts me.

Those who argue that Tolkien SHOULD have had a female Fellow dismiss the hypocritical nature of their very argument. Which is: to try to force or influence the idea on anyone that it is the "right thing to do" ** to include a female fellowship character shows how much the arguer does not possess the ability to accept the NON-existence of such a character themselves.

In other words...
The contradiction comes when you realize that the arguer expects others to be open to the possibility of having a female Fellowship character when they themselves are NOT open to the possibility of the Fellowship WITHOUT a female character (ie. the Fellowship just the way that it is). They are obviously NOT fine with the Fellowship "just as it is" or else they would not have brought up the argument in the first place.

--------------------------
** - When I say "right thing to do" I base that off the original question of "SHOULD Tolkien have made a member of the Fellowship female?"
To use SHOULD implies that it is the preferred way one would handle a situation (the correct way, the right way).

[Eowyn of Rohan]

No. No woman was necessary to be part of the Fellowship.

It's a radical feminist argument. One that frankly (as a woman) disgusts me.

Those who argue that Tolkien SHOULD have had a female Fellow dismiss the hypocritical nature of their very argument. Which is: to try to force or influence the idea on anyone that it is the "right thing to do" ** to include a female fellowship character shows how much the arguer does not possess the ability to accept the NON-existence of such a character themselves.

In other words...
The contradiction comes when you realize that the arguer expects others to be open to the possibility of having a female Fellowship character when they themselves are NOT open to the possibility of the Fellowship WITHOUT a female character (ie. the Fellowship just the way that it is). They are obviously NOT fine with the Fellowship "just as it is" or else they would not have brought up the argument in the first place.

--------------------------
** - When I say "right thing to do" I base that off the original question of "SHOULD Tolkien have made a member of the Fellowship female?"
To use SHOULD implies that it is the preferred way one would handle a situation (the correct way, the right way).

[Nurvingiel]

I totally agree with you Eowyn! You always have great posts, worth reading twice!

The other day, my friends and I were talking about a totally sexist book. It was written by a feminist, and totally sexist against men! I said, "You can't counterract sexism with more sexism."

Along the same lines, my karate sensei described attitudes in society as a pendulum. It starts at an exteme level to one side. In history, many societies were extremely sexist against women. This has lessened over the centuries, to the point that it can be argued things are going the other way - (Western) society is now sexist against men, and the pendulum swings the other way.

We will swing from one extreme view to the other extreme. We will then return to the first extreme view, but to a lesser degree, and so on, back and forth, like a swinging pendulum gradually losing momentum.

Right now, I feel that we're battling it out in the middle. At my university, there is sexism against men and women.

There isn't one single tenured female professor, however, female students greatly outnumber male students. Old-school versus new-school.

Hopefully equalists like myself and Eowyn (which I assume from your forward-thinking post) can just stop the pendulum altogether.

In tems of Tolkein, this means that we can't overly read into this and say this work of art needs to be changed to fit into our view of a 'correct' book, as Eowyn was saying.

To do this would be fighting sexism with more sexism, and we all know this doesn't work.

I believe we should be open-minded and accept people's ideas as they are. If people feel threatened by some kind of gender imbalance, then I accept that, weust have different ideas on how to deal with the situation.

I always thought it was wierd there was only four girls in my grade nine power mechanics class (back in the day ) but if other girls don't feel like taking power mechanics, then that's entirely up to them.

Tolkein cannot be improved upon.

Cheers, Nurvingiel

[Wayfarer]

Excuse me, fair maidens.

But you are aware that the single most devastating character in tolkien's writings was a woman, aren't you? I am, of course, referring to that chick who merely defied kings, defeated sauron, and went toe to toe with melkor, just to save her foolhardy boyfriend. Oh, yeah, she also rose from the dead. What was her name? Loonybin? Tinfoil?

Let's think for a moment... Beren, Luthien, and Huan manage to do what Finwe, Feanor, Fingolfin, Finrod, Fingon, Maedhros, Maglor, Celegorm, Curufin, Caranthir, Amras, Amrod, and Elwe all failed to do.

Luthien destroys sauron's main fortress with a word. Offhand i can't think of any men who I would be sure could do that. So who's getting the short shrift now? Tell me that, eh?

[Lelondul]

Wayfarer, your normally inane ramblings were bound to produce something good.....eventually. I'm just touched I was here to hear it!

Bravo ole chap!

[Nurvingiel]

Now why didn't we think of her?

Just goes to show Tolkein has kick-ass women too.

(Loonybin! Tinfoil! Haha! )

[Entlover]

You all no doubt know that Tolkien enjoyed male company, jokes, beer drinking, pub type thing get-togethers. He would have felt (his friend CS Lewis says somewhere, and I'm sure JRR would have agreed) that women were an intrusion on a male gathering, which is basically what the Fellowship was.
He understood the male friendship thing very well; probably felt that he wasn't qualified to write about female friendships (in the literature he studied, female friendships were often regarded as non-existent). He did fairly ok on romantic relationships because he understood them from the male point of view.
I'm happy with the Fellowship as it is. Let the guys go out and defeat the tyrants; Rosie and I will stay home and bake pies for their return.

[Nurvingiel]

Nice Entlover. Don't forget to bake a pie for Eowyn too! The best authors write what they know.

[Christiana]

hey guys, theres absolutly nothing wrong with no females in the Fellowship.(After all, Tolkien didnt know me )Its just kind of fun to do the "what if's"