[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

Littlemanpoet - I truly believe you are treading on dangerous ground. .... Would Tolkien have had an equal understanding of gender relations vis-a-vis a male character who was a slave on a large plantation in the antebellum South, or a man incarcerated in a death camp during the second World War? Or would someone closer to that era and mindset ( or at least one who had studied these particular periods to a greater degree) have an advantage in understanding the male in question...... even if that someone was a female? These are extreme examples, but you get my drift.

Yes, Child, I do. You're not quite catching mine. Nor is my "ground" as dangerous as you think or fear. I'll explain below.

Originally Posted by Child

We are talking about something much more basic than whether a woman can or cannot be classed as a feminist. Rather, it all gets down to how any person, male or female, views the divide between men and women. Some folk see that divide as being virtually unbridgable. I am not one of them. I believe there is more that binds us together than separates us. And because of that, I believe that a female writer can realistically portray a man and his thoughts/feelings, just as an excellent male author can depict a woman with such sensitivity that it makes the reader cry.

Quite. I do NOT consider the divide to be unbridgeable. Both genders are able to write portrayals of their opposites that capture all of what the genders have in common. However, there are aspects of gender that are peculiar to fantasy & romance that are not readily understandable and must be interpreted by men to women, and probably vice versa (it's just that I am familiar with my gender only). Your next quote, Child, brings us right to my point:

Originally Posted by Child

Surely you don't believe, for example, that Tolkien's Beren is more successful than his Luthien, merely because Tolkien was a male. Luthien has one foot in faerie but the rest of her is very "real", and I have no trouble accepting her feelings for Beren. And would you criticize Luthien for going out on the road on a wild adventure in a manner that most women would not do, as someone who was trying to wrest from men the role that rightly belongs to them? She was definitely a nonconformist by the standards of Elven society and even by our own contemporary standards.

It's not a matter of success, but that a man wrote Luthien and not a woman. Tolkien wrote fantasy (myth/legend/feigned history, etc.) because it best communicated his vision, which included certain aspects of his understanding of and appreciation of both genders.

Most of his women are idealizations. An Elf is by definition an idealization, which includes Luthien, Arwen, and Galadriel. Eowyn is not an idealization; but she is masculinized in that she is a warrior, and a hero-worshipper (Aragorn); she idealizes. Rosy is one of the few women in LotR that are not idealized; she shouldn't be, for she is intended for Sam the gardener. Lobelia is enough of a villainess that she does not fit the idealization pattern. Melian is not only an Elf, but a Valar! Ioreth is a foil for Aragorn.

Why does Luthien go out and have an adventure? To save her man; not for glory, honor, riches, or anything else -> for love. Therefore, she is perfectly acceptable to the most unabashedly sexist men. But that's not my point.

I understand the idealization pattern from the inside (check out Green Dragon VII: Falowik and Uien for an example). In Romance particularly, idealization is the pattern dé jeur for men who write women. Tolkien frankly fell in love with Galadriel and kept further idealizing her the older he got. Luthien is Tolkien's idealization of Edith.

So women writers, if you want to fool this male reader as to your gender, write your women idealized, and your men virtually worshiping them. This is, I think, a small part of what it involved in "writing in the spirit of Tolkien".