The Role of Women in The Lord of the Rings

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Thank you Mark for the links. I had already found the “Femles in the Fellowship” but the “Fair Sex” thread by Child is a gem. We should, I think, consider the current thread as a revival of that one.

Imladris: I’m not sure that Rosie and Goldberry are sufficiently distinct from the other women to constitute radically alternative visions of women’s roles. I think instead that Rosie is very much a hobbity/’lower’/more everyday version of the type exemplified by Arwen – that domestic woman who awaits the return of her hero, is won by him, and rewards him with marriage and children. Goldberry is, I think, a fairy-tale version of Galadriel – although her relationship with Tom is certainly of a more equitable and interesting nature than is Galadriel’s with Celeborn.

You said that

We all do the same things it seems. It doesn't matter whether we be male or female. It's the choices we make. And there are three choices to be made: to sit back and let evil win, to fight it, or to join it. And both men and women did that. The only thing that differed was how they did it.

I tend to agree with this, but I’m not sure that it really answers my question about the roles of women. I agree wholeheartedly that the women and men “do the same thing” but what do you mean by the fact that “how they did it” differs? Is the ‘manner’ in which the women hold to their faith and hope different from the men? Are the men and women maintaining faith in different things? And why is it that the men maintain their faith by doing whereas the women maintain their faith by waiting?

Or, maybe it’s more that the men have faith in the cause/quest and the women have faith in the men?

A very nice point about female beauty Esty, but it’s not just confined to the women: the men are all beautiful as well, if they are good, and ugly if they are evil. It seems that the stereotype is more moral than gendered. It’s interesting, though, that Sauron was once beautiful, masking his inner evil – is this in any way like Galadriel, whose goddess like beauty at first hides her true desires, but which she justifies by rejecting the Ring?