Females in the Fellowship

[Lalaith]

Firstly, I have to admit that I am quite in despair by some of the (I am assuming) young women posting in this thread who, in the year 2003, are quite unable to see their own gender portraying any other literary function than love/sex object.
Girls! Lift your imaginations above Hollywood and the more mawkish kind of fanfiction.
I have already given you a wise dwarfwoman. What about, instead of Gandalf, we have Melian, the powerful Maia, returned to Middle Earth on one last mission? Now, don't tell me *she's* going end up messing up the quest by having her period and crying and getting a crush on Legolas...
[img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]
But seriously.
Child of the 7th Age, I love your Arthurian legends analysis. I would add that the Arthurian canon is one that has evolved over some 1500 years, during which women were portrayed in all kinds of ways...but the popular Arthurian image is I think the one most closely associated with Malory's Morte d'Arthur and the French romances. That is, middle/late mediaeval. Tolkien's own period of speciality, and the period he I think most identified with, was considerably earlier, (what some term the 'heroic' period) and I agree, he wasn't overly fond of the late mediaeval mindset in general.
I also think it is interesting that many of Tolkien's most complex and (in terms of modern thinking) most 'right-on' heroines were in his writings not intended for publication. The characters in LotR were, to some extent, driven by commercial considerations and what was considered 'proper' at the time.
Judging by the writing in the Silmarillion etc, his own personal views of women were, for a man of his era and circumstance, remarkably progressive.
Oh, and with regard to male/female platonic relations, what of Aredhel, sister of Turgon, and her friendship with the sons of Feanor?