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Originally Posted by Zigûr
Do Elves really seem this squeamish or vain in the books? I feel like this modern pop-cultural idea of Elves as universally being aristocratic snobs who spend all their time sitting around smelling flowers or something is not really borne out in Professor Tolkien's work. Surely Elves had to do all manner of "dirty" jobs all the time. They were probably just able to do them more effectively and with more dignity and poise than Men and other peoples; perhaps not when in the fetters of Morgoth, which I imagine was a miserable time for all concerned, but in their own realms.
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Squeamish, no. Vain and snobbish, yeah.
Think this is partly because pretty much all the Elves we meet are high ranking nobles and also, more significantly, because the Prof wanted to give the Elves this aura of elevated and transcendent aloofness - describing them at work with dull menial tasks goes against that. But yeah, since they seem to have most of the basic needs that Men do, one has to assume that they also do the dirty work that comes with satisfying them.
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Originally Posted by Inzil
Maybe Eöl's "stoop" was also an image of the way in which he'd become almost Dwarvish: obsessed with his craft, secretive, and insular.
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Yeah, that too I'm sure.