Quote:
Originally Posted by jallanite
Given all that, and given that Tolkien nowhere proposes that any real or fictional society would be improved by females being given less voice than males, it is not worth making much of it. Those who try don’t get very far. Rightly so I think.
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I didn't say it was, it was an observation not a criticism. If anything it serves to highlight the renewal brought by the return of the King and bringing home his Queen. I am sure somewhere, though I haven't located it about how part of the problem of Gondor was that it had become obsessed by it's past and thought less of the future. No doubt the darkening state of the world was a factor but it is noticeable that both Theodred and Boromir died childless at an age when most heirs of great houses are expected to have done their duty by posterity whatever their preferences. OF course their deaths allow a complete new order butI still think there is significance beyond that.
I think that Imrahil is the example of how Denethor might have been, both in his relationship to Faramir and his leadership. He recognises Aragorn instantly for what he is and cedes authority. His heir already has an heir at the time of the War of the Ring... a little triumph of hope against the darkness. Faramir of course becomes Prince mirroring his Uncle's rank and his fiefdom is the reclaimed Ithilien "the Garden of Gondor" as verdant as Minas Tirith is cold and stony.
I have never felt the lack of female characters even as a nine year old proto-feminist first exposed to the hobbit and by the time I got to LOTR Eowyn and Galadriel were sufficiently wonderful to compensate for a mere head count, and I find their artificial insertion into the films patronising and as ludicrous as if they say made the Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan a woman. Anyway this has been a long digression off the topic, my fault no doubt for mentioning something that occured to me in the course of another response.