[davem]

Originally Posted by H-I

et for those holding Tolkien unable to describe man/woman relationship, Kronos, I should recommend Aldarion and Erendis, as found in Unfinished Tales. There is a good read on it.

Yet the story of Aldarion & Erendis is more complicated, at least according to Elizabeth Currie, in her book The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien:

Erendis is indeed a feminist of sorts; but hers is a feminism which I think few women would want much to do with. she does not go beyond the stereotypes of her culture; she merely accepts some & inverts others. Erendis scorns the doings of men just as many men at that time scorned the domestic doings of women. When in her husbands absence she establishes her own household, it is wholly feminine. For instance, there is no music in Erendis’ house; playing instruments is men’s business, & since there are no men, there is no music, apart from the songs the women servants sing to accomppany their work...

Erendis’s great faults are pride & self-will. At the beginning of their courtship, she is said to think that Aldarion ‘was too high’. Yet she looked on no man with favour thereafter, * every suiitor was dismissed.’ Too high or not, Erendis knows who she wants to marry & is more tahn loathe to let him go...Erendis is depicted as knowing full well what she does. ‘Never would Erendis take less, that she might not lose all; & fearing the sea, & begrudging to all ships the felling of trees which she loved, she determined that she must utterly defeat the Sea & the ships, or else herself be defeated utterly.’ ....She is determined that Aldarion will be hers & hers alone - to make him subsume his personality in hers, in a grotesque inversion of the turn-of-the-century theory that a woman should ‘dislove herself’ in her husband (enshrined in Wagner’s opera Lohengrin among other places)....It can well be said that Aldarion has the same faullts, but he at least is shown as trying to share his interests & enthusiasms with his wife, whereas Erendis meets all overtures with blank indifference.

The over-domesticated aspect of Erendis extends to her understanding - or lack of it - of the wider world. Erendis is a creature of the island realm of Numenor. ...If Erendis acknowledges the existence of a wider world, then she will have to accept that her model of how the world works, which is based only upon Numenor, is not necessarily right. She will have to change her mind because of an external influence, & the change is potentially drastic. If that change is too big, then she will indeed ‘die’; she will no lloger be who she thinks she is right now. And Erendis cannot make the leap of imagination to see taht the new person might be beneficially different; that she might grow as the result of her experiences. ..

Indeed, Erendis has more than a touch of Denethor’s attitude; if she cannot have exactly what she wants she will accept nothing else. Failing to see that changes she has not willed may lead to growth & unforseen good things, Erendis falls into stagnation. She has to dominate all around, & when that fails she has no idea what to do next except to remain within the small sphere where she does have power over what happens. It is an interesting version of one of Tolkien’s long-term preoccupations, the rights & wrongs of power & free will.

Erendis’s disinterest in the wider world, then, fits exactly with her character; ultimately she is a shallow, self-centred woman who cares for others only as they serve her will. Those who can neither affect her nor be affected by her are dismissed as irrelevant; they might as well not exist...

Her unjust actions mean misery for her own decendants, & she proves unwise as a ruler of a people as well. Ancalime neglects all her father’s overseas policies, & it can be argued , following one of Tolkien’s versions of the history of Numenor, that this is not just a minor mistake...

As blind to the world as her mother, Ancalime protects Numenor’s trees at the cost of massive, uncontrolled deforestation elsewhere. Nor does she ever think of extending her care to people who may not themselves be Numenoreans, but who are being seriously affected by things that Numenoreans do - things that could be controlled if Ancalime wanted to do so. By pretending taht greed & racism do not exist & so not bothering to combat them, Ancalime allows the first hint of the Sahdow to enter Numenor - the Shadow of evil that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the island & its people together...It is a devastating picture of what happens when people can neither hold to their ‘proper’ roles nor transcend them, & as such, I think it is in accord with Tolkien’s other writings.

I wonder if that will spark any comments!