Tolkien the Matricide

[Birdland]

OK, now we all know that J.R.R. didn't literally kill his dear ol' mum. But he seemed to be quite fond of bumping off all the mothers of his characters. Let's look at this:

Frodo - dead mom.
Sam - dead mom.
Boromir - dead mom.
Aragorn - dead mom AND dead foster mom.
Éomer and Éowyn - Ditto
Legolas - J.R.R. "forgets" to give him one.
Gimli - Eh, he's a dwarf. Who knows?
Treebeard - Mom missing, presumed dead.
Pippin and Merry - No dates given, but what do you THINK?

Now Tolkien isn't the only author to do this. Kipling bumped off the moms of Mowgli and Kim. Mark Twain did in the mom of Huck Finn. The list goes on and on. Heck, even Bambi's mother died!

Now, I've asked this question in a light-hearted manner, but I am very curious. It seems to have become a literary given that male characters cannot have adventures unless the mother figure is out of the way.
Why is this? In real life we know this is not the case. No mom ever stopped her son from setting out on a noble quest if he had his heart set on it.

Is it that the authors don't want to deal with the female characters at all? Not even in the capacity of those "who sit at home and wait?" Do they feel that by making their characters "orphans", so to speak, that it adds an air of pathos to them, making them more sympathetic? Do they think that if a mom was around, she would "talk him out of it?"

Or maybe they think that a character growing up with a female role model would make a "wimpy" adventurer.

Seriously, this has started to bug me.

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: Birdland ]