If Bethberry is "fashionably late", then I must be what the cat dragged in!
Davem, Bethberry, -
It's interesting how we all had such differing responses to the "class thing" in the first chapter. I was acutely aware of Sam's "place" within the Shire the first time I read the book and in fact identified some of his situation with my own. As the daughter of a factory worker and grand-daughter of a miner, I remember daydreaming about Sam as I trudged off to clean other folks' houses to earn money for tuition. When I told my parents that I had decided to continue on in medieval history past the master's, I clearly remember being lectured about the undesirability of chasing after "Elves and Dragons" and was advised to seek "cabbages and potatoes." Needless to say, I had different ideas!
Poor Sam! Always having to stretch between two worlds starting with the very first chapter. Yet
Bethberry I do think there is beauty in both the situations that Tolkien presents for us: the chasing after and the coming back. I went racing out the door, turning my back on much I had been raised with, a world that was too small but one that had very firm values and where there were people who genuinely cared for each other. Instead, I chased after academia and later went roaring off to live in England, so I could see some of that scenery Tolkien described. (This was thirty-five years ago, so perhaps there was a bit more standing than today.)
Ironically, however, I find life has almost led me in a circle. With marriage and the birth of children, I am once again rooted in a community and stand much closer to something that, in its better moments, shows at least some resemblance to the Shire. Tolkien was very much a family man. My guess is that the goodness that shines through the Shire actually reflects two things. On the one hand, there were his memories of his boyhood, including the physical environment of the Midlands, something that's already been discussed on this thread. But there's something else as well. Tolkien was a husband and father. Shire life is essentially family life and I think he must have looked to the model of his own household for some of that. There would have been no Hobbits and, by implication, no Lord of the Rings unless Tolkien the father sat and told stories to his children. The "small" life that Tolkien describes, with both its good points and its shortcomings, was something that he found deep within his own heart. And, because it has a basis in personal reality, it is very compelling to many of us, even those who in our own time preferred to go chasing after Elves!