doug*platypus said:
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I think that in most cases, once our hero has been born, their mother is simply no longer required.
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I think this is absolutely true. It's a little cold, perhaps, but this literary device has nothing to do with loss. In a world with well-defined gender roles (like Middle-Earth), once a woman has given birth to her son, she has nothing more to offer him. A father (or father figure, like Bilbo or Elrond) can mentor him, teach him to read or to fight or otherwise to be a man, but what could he learn from his mother? How to weave a standard, maybe, or how to do his washing in the rain, but in all likelihood he's going to have a wife to do those things.