[The Mirrorball Man]

Tolkien wasn't misogynistic: I don't think he was putting down women, trying to push an agenda or promoting his own views about gender and society in his work. In fact, I don't think he had any opinion about women.

Women in Tolkien's books are like Hobbits in Middle-Earth: creatures of myth, that most people have never met. And when they do meet them, they're not particularly interested. Galadriel, Arwen, Luthien, Melian, all of them are mysterious creatures that might worship but never truly understand. The only exception (I think) is Eowyn, who is, for all dramatic purposes, a man.

Tolkien wrote about women the way he might have written about Chinese culture after having spend two weeks in Beijing. In my opinion, it's one of his major shortcomings as a writer, but on the other hand, the stories he wrote took place in a man's world, so his literary 'sexism' if you want to call it that way, had almost no influence on the quality of the books.

A quick note about Arwen in the movies. I don't think Peter Jackson was trying to force a female character into the story. He just wanted to turn the couple of existing Aragorn/Arwen scenes into a subplot, so that we actually care about it when the story ends. We won't know if he was successful until 2003, but I think that it's an excellent idea.