Originally Posted by
Rumil in another thread:
Quote:
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... strong female roles are thin on Middle Earth in Tolkien's work ...
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Granted, but I think that certain characteristics of hobbits: namely, their shyness, love of growing plants, and relatively small stature, for example, substitute in many cases for appearance and behavior that men typically associate with women. I wouldn't go so far as to call hobbits "effeminate" by nature, but they do tend to live and act in ways antithetical to the adolescent, swaggering machismo that animates so much of infantile male mythology. Therefore, by creating morally "strong" hobbit characters like Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, Tolkien essentially provided what strong, mature women would have supplied, but without the mythological penalty of putting girls into a boy's fantasy adventure.
I say these things because I once wanted to pay tribute to a strong woman who I consider one of my country's real heroes: a mother who had lost her son in Iraq who subsequently confronted the President of the United States from a position of enormous relative powerlessness but far greater moral authority. For inspiration, my first thoughts turned to Shakespeare's
Measure for Measure, where Isabella pleads with a judge for her condemned brother's life. Then I thought of
Macbeth and
Hamlet in reference to the unequal struggle with bloody power figures. Then I thought of
The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings, specifically "Riddles in the Dark" and "The Shadow of the Past," respectively. Then this happened:
Metrics for Measure
(Dedicated to Cindy Sheehan)
The pricking of his thumbs begins to sting
As something wicked comes his way unsought:
The awful truth about the play as thing
Wherein the conscience of the prince is caught
Now Isabella camps outside his ranch
Her silent supplication real not fake
Her rude requests for justice make him blanch
Her simple power poised to grab and shake
Her time, down in a roadside ditch, she bides
With twenty*-hundred crosses witness mute
While safe within his bubble he resides
The gashes in the dead his lies confute
His thought no counsel credible informs
So on he stumbles, mouthing scripted rhyme
Upon the gibbet’s scaffold he performs
For his allotted fifteen minutes’ time
An angry ape with glassy essence clear
Before high heaven trotting out his trick
Afraid of nothing quite so much as fear
Which makes splenetic angels laugh till sick
Assured of his own ignorance he pressed
To have himself informed of what he knew
In little brief authority he dressed
So as to mask his nakedness from view
His counselor, the clown, roved here and there
Professing, like Rasputin, cures to know
For royal hemophilia laid bare
As turds that blossom on the frozen snow
But still the would-be great no greatness had
They thus could only mock the small who sobbed
Until disrobed, in disrepute unclad,
Their perfidy showed clear to those they’d robbed
But Gandalf once to Frodo Baggins said,
In telling him his uncle Bilbo’s tale,
That even small ones lost in fear and dread
Can turn the blast of fortune’s greatest gale
For Bilbo spared the vicious Gollum’s good
In pity of one long so lonely lost
And would not strike him even though he could
Which in the end saved all great evil’s cost
No doubt some live who maybe ought to die
And some that die deserve to live instead
But who shall make of his own life a lie
Who deals out death in judgment of the dead?
And as the wizard might have said at length
What Isabella did, a court to sway:
How excellent to have a giant’s strength
But tyrannous to use it in that way
For even very wise ones cannot see
The end to all the mischief that ensues
From feckless fights and their mad misery
As complex as a rainbow’s many hues
And as such smallish suitors might combine
Soliciting compassion as their cause
They plead for pity in a single line
That pelting petty officers might pause
For making thunder just to hear the noise
And lightning just to see the awe and shock
If overused by adolescent boys
Will look more like the chicken than the hawk
They like it well enough when first they think
That all will go exactly as they dream
But soon enough they shun the fetid stink
That clogs the nose and gags them till they scream
Those wise who hold great power in reserve
And do not waste it in a foolish deed
Have moral power more which well will serve
When faced with future’s grave and greater need
Thus Isabella Baggins now implores
The one who can to pity those who serve
And bring them home from bloody foreign shores
To reap the future lives that they deserve
We only ask for metrics we can use
To measure what is often promised glib
By bureaucrats who went and lit the fuse
And now can only hedge, and stall, and fib
The prince from all his lies, has not escaped
Despite the chimps and baboons that he aped
Upon this dwarfish thief with soul misshaped
His title's giant robe hangs loosely draped
* Note: As of early 2008, the number of dead American soldiers in Iraq had reached 4,000 – or “forty hundred,” as the poetic meter would have us mark the doubling yet again of premature graves filled with more luckless victims of vainglorious venality.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011
So, it appears that deep down in my own psyche, I associate strong women and hobbits, without the distracting violence and sexuality that attend more "modern" conceptions of "femininity" and "strength." Whether Tolkien intended that sort of subliminal association or not, I cannot say; but it seems to me that with the best qualities of hobbits to work with, Professor Tolkien did not require much in the way of overt female roles to communicate his major themes and issues.
Just a few thoughts and verse stanzas on the subject ...