A fascinating insider's interview

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

So this demand must have come from Tolkien himself. Why did he, who was later to be so against bullying domination of others, demand it? What could have made him so insenstive to Edith's own spiritual perspective? I seem to recall Carpenter saying something that Tolkien was also quite indifferent to Edith's own qualms and discomforts with the demands of confession. What caused this?

Far be it from me to get all Freudian, but I suspect his feelings for his mother may have played some part - he did state:

"My own dear mother was a martyr indeed, and it is not to everybody that God grants so easy a way to his great gifts as he did to Hilary and myself, giving us a mother who killed herself with labour and trouble to ensure us keeping the faith" http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/wood-biography.html

from the same piece:

Edith Bratt Tolkien sacrificed a great deal, in fact, to be Tolkien's wife. He called her "little one," and he sometimes treated her as a child. For example, he simply insisted that she become a Catholic before their marriage, never explaining how she might come to share his deep intellectual reverence for the Church of Rome. She grew to resent having to make confession before attending mass, regarding these as outward duties more than inward necessities. Later when Tolkien became an Oxford professor, she felt terribly inadequate, often even speechless, among other professorial wives with considerably greater education and cultural achievement than hers. She became known as the "wife who did not call" and who was thus excluded from the "at homes" which other Oxford wives hosted. Worse still was Edith's resentment of Tolkien's need for male intellectual companions, especially C. S. Lewis and the other Inklings. She saw that he came truly alive only among such friends. Though Edith bore him three sons and a daughter, and though they raised them amidst happy familial life, she and Tolkien came to dwell in virtually separate spheres--occupying different bedrooms and keeping their own hours. Tolkien had a Johnsonian dread of sleep, and he would often labor very late, partly because he could not work at his desk without interruption until Edith had gone to bed. Yet Tolkien felt such a huge debt for the sacrifices Edith had made in his behalf that, when he retired from Oxford, he insisted that they live in a rather nondescript seaside resort near Bournemouth. He knew she would be happy there, even though it meant nearly total isolation from his scholarly friends. She remained for him the orphan girl who had rescued the orphan boy from an immense loneliness and sadness. Hence Tolkien's poignant remembrance of her: "For ever (especially when alone) we still met in woodland glade and went hand in hand many times to escape the shadow of imminent death before our last parting"

[Lalwendë]

I always get the impression that Edith must have loved Tolkien deeply - to convert from your own faith to another when there was no need to is good enough evidence. But then we also have the strong evidence that she broke off another engagement to be with him again once he was old enough (maybe she became engaged to someone else in despair. not believing he would stay faithful?). And she must have been a bit of a 'catch' too.

Her behaviour in Oxford to me sounds like she simply did not feel as if she fitted in to the society available to her, so she withdrew instead. It was a shame she did have to convert because she would have found more outlets as Mithalwen says. But it's also a shame that due to the middle class social constraints of the day she probably didn't spend as much time with her own children as she could have done.

The more I read about the Tolkiens, the more clear it becomes that they were both unsure of their place in society and within the class structure.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Originally Posted by davem

I suspect his feelings for his mother may have played some part

Yes! I think that is the heart of the matter.

One more aspect - at that time, a woman was expected to support her husband, not the other way around. Tolkien's indifference to his wife's inner needs was probably typical for most marriages then. And women weren't encouraged to express their needs and wishes; seems to me that not only children were to be "seen and not heard"!