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caffeinatedwoman · 2 years ago

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To all those powerful women, I would like to add these one:

Idril Celebrindal an important character in Gondolin, daughter of King Turgon and who build a tunnel that helped save the people during the fall of Godonlin, also mother to Eärendil, father of Elrond.

Queen Melian, a maiar who protected a whole realm through the famous Girdle of Melian, a barrier protection that kept their enemies way from Doriath, mother of Lúthien Tinúviel.

Morwen Eledhen of House of Bëor, wife of Hurin Thalion and mother of Túrin Turanbar, Urwen & Nienor. After the defeat of the men of Dor-Lómin during the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and her husband's imprisoment by Morgoth, she alone raised her children amist great hardship.

We should never forget about Lúthien Tinúviel who together with Huan the hound of Valinor defeat Sauron, freed Beren and took one of the Silmarils from the enemy, a feat not many achieved, her granddaughter Elwing is the mother of Elrond.

Yes, there are fewer women' stories than I would like in Tolkien's Legendarium, specially in the Lord of The Rings but the one who have a voice have powerful tales of achieve greatness under hardship, of course not many have happy ending but few tales of the Silmarillion have happy ends.

Tolkien, Women and Mothers

I love Tolkien so much, but I hate that the female characters of LOTR are in the single digits, and I hate that Tolkien is so averse to writing women that a surprising number of his characters only have a father and no mother.

Seriously. Tolkien’s works are chock full of characters who have a father but lack a mother, to the point where it’s a pretty consistent pattern. All plot-relevant intergenerational relationships are father-child, or maybe father figure-child relationships, with the possible exception of… maybe Morwen, in the Silmarillion? Fathers (and uncles) raise children, and have all sorts of positive and negative relationships with them, while women seem to be, well, superfluous to the whole process. The dearth of women in LOTR is at least partially explained by the fact that it’s a story about a war, set in a world where most women don’t fight. But women seem to be absent even from the margins of the story.

Here’s a brief list of LOTR character with an important father and an irrelevant or completely absent mother.

Frodo. Both his parents are dead, he was raised by his bachelor uncle who is an important character in his own right.

Sam. His father is a minor character, and he’s occasionally mentioned in the story, but his mother is never mentioned or named.

Legolas. His father appeared in the Hobbit, his mother is never mentioned or named.

Gimli. His father appeared in the Hobbit, his mother is never mentioned or named.

Boromir and Faramir. Their father is an important character, their dead mother is named and mentioned once.

Éomer and Éowyn. Both their parents are dead, they were raised by their widower uncle whose wife died in childbirth. The uncle is an important character in his own right.

Beregil. His father is a relevant supporting character, his mother is unnamed and unmentioned.

Arwen (and Elladan and Elrohir). Their father is an important character, their mother is not dead, but she sailed West offscreen, and mentioned only in the appendices.

Aragorn. A weird edge case. His father died early, and he actually knew his mother – but she only shows up in the appendices, and now that she’s dead, Aragorn’s only parental-ish figure is Elrond.

Celebrían has a mother in Galadriel, but Celebrían herself is long gone, and absent from the actual plot of LOTR. I might be wrong, but the only mother-child relationships I actually remember reading in the text of the trilogy are: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and his son Lotho, Mrs Cotton and her daughter Rosie, then that same Rosie Gamgee and her daughter Elanor. I like them, but all of them are tertiary characters who barely appear in the story. As far as I can tell, the remaining characters lack named parents altogether, or their parents are only named in the family trees in the appendices.

And then there are specias as a whole.

Ents are all male, and there are no entings since the ent-wives were lost.

Wizards were not born, nor do they beget children. Also they are all male, even though wizards are Maiar, and we know that plenty of female (or female-appearing) Maiar exist.

The appendices tell us that dwarf women exist, but are rare and reclusive, so we don’t meet a single one of them.

And then there are the orcs. We don’t see any female orcs. Orcs may or may not even be capable of sexual reproduction. And while I really don’t want to know the details, I’m pretty sure that knowing whether or not orc women exist would tell us a lot about the nature and origins of orcs.

#lord of the rings #silmarillion #gondolin #women in Tolkien #idril celebrindal #luthien #morwen #jrr tolkien

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