Are Tolkiens Books Sexist?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Readers identify with characters in books, and for male readers there are dozens of very different characters to choose from and they appear throughout the books. If we just take Lord of the Rings: You can imagine that you are or wish you were Frodo, Aragorn, Sam, Legolas, Gandalf, even Saruman. Maybe some women readers do identify with Arwen or Galadriel and, more likely, with Eowen but this wouldn't keep you going for whole chapters, even books, during which these don't appear.

The fact that it was entirely written from the point of view of one female character didn't diminish my understanding of Mansfield Park. An author will usually indicate which character or characters are intended to be the focal point of the narrative, and it is with these that we are intended to identify. In the case of LoTR, that's the four hobbits: we know what they're thinking, how they see things and what they're doing and we rarely see events in which they're not involved. We're not supposed to imagine ourselves being Gandalf or Aragorn; Eowyn or Galadriel and especially not Saruman; if we were then the entire tone and perspective of the story would be different. We're intended to imagine being present where they are present and seeing what they do and say, as in a myth. Besides which author's aren't required to provide an equal balance of gender, race, religion, eye-colour, occupation, social class or ability to drive. In fact during the first half of the last century it was perfectly acceptable to do the opposite. The obsession with equal involvement for everyone in everything is a very modern trend.

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Squatter of Amon Rudh ]