Reply #8: Tolkien & Women

[NashVegas]

I'll never understand the popular criticism about Tolkien writing women. As a 12 year old girl, reading the book for the first time, I had no trouble identifying with Eowyn, nor has her character dimmed in later readings. In writing of her desire to be seen as the equal to the men around her, in battle, he was conveying the struggle of so many of the women of his time, getting stymied at every turn.

In having her be the one to kill off the Witch King, Eowyn got the highest ranked "kill" of any of the men - and one that no man was capable of committing. If that's not an allusion & paean to the unrecognized strength of the female gender, I don't know what is.

Arwen was just a background character, not so much to say there. Galadriel was someone any little girl would have easily fantasized about being. If she wasn't a major part of the story, she was a highly memorable one.


Some famous women in literature:

Scarlett O'Hara - written by a woman. Complex character capable of doing horrible things, and doing great things for the wrong reasons.
Madame Bovary - written by Flaubert - oh, THERE was a peach of a girl, huh?
Blanche DuBois - Tennessee Williams - another winner.
Medea - Eurypides - fascinating woman, in spite of being a witch.
Camille - Dumas - a dying courtesan.
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy - do I need to spell it out?
Lolita - Nabakov - now there was a fun one

I don't expect to see a female in Tolkien written any more realistically than any other male writer, especially in pre-modern literature. The women he did write in, at least he thought more highly of them than many of his gender did of their own female characters.