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Originally Posted by littlemanpoet
It would be a mistake to reduce it to that. Actually, the contemporary understanding of gender role and nature is the historical aberration. Granted, we may see it as the most evolved or developed state (or not), but general intellecutal, values-oriented, socio-economic, and political equality (or at least the belief that so it ought to be) has not been the norm.
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The desire to eliminate slavery--an form of supreme inequality--is also a "historical aberration" as you use the term. And I think it is fair to say that Tolkien repudiates slavery in LotR.
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Originally Posted by LMP
That would be "free of the gross", to be accurate. One writer's "gross" may be another's "passable". What, in gender role, be considered "gross" on the Rohan RP forum? Most RPrs do make a conscious effort to employ in their writing as much as they can discern of Eorling culture. That as a given, we would have to go with what Tolkien has told us about that culture, which is (with translator's conceit accounted for) basically and only Anglo-Saxon in nature, and loosely based on medieval conceptions (though not entirely, whatever that is supposed to mean). So is "gross", perhaps, "practical woman employing the language of Romance in order to find a man to marry"? I think not. Romance, as such, was high-medieval, and Eorling culture was based on more or less (c)1000 A.D. Anglo-Saxon culture (I think).
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Oh, when I posted Tolkien's letter, the context was a discussion thread in Rohan, but I wasn't thinking solely in terms of Rohan RPGs. Actually, I was thinking more in terms simply of the nature of fanfictioning RPGs. Is such related only to a faithful imitation of the original, or can it provide imaginative re-interpretation of the original, or can it incorporate--*gasp*--revisions of the original? Is fanfiction ever free to be a wholly unique, original art, as Tolkien's art was?
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Originally Posted by lmp
I think Tolkien took "practical female" and "idealistic male" as creationally normative. Evil, he would say (I think), would be any aberrations thereto (such as contemporary understandings).
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I thought evil for Tolkien was the desire for power over others, even power which purports to be in service of others.
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Originally Posted by lmp
Oh, that's easy. She was horrified and depressed that someone who could write something as great as LotR could have such ridiculous views..... (if I know Fea...)
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Feet of clay, eh? tsk.
