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Virtuella's Idiosyncratic Literary Criticisms by Virtuella	36 Review(s)
cookiefleck	Reviewed Chapter: 4 on 6/26/2009
A friend just forwarded me the link to this story and I thought of you... thought you'd find it interesting. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1906740,00.html?xid=rss-fullworld-yahoo Author Reply: Thank you, that was very interesting!

Shemyaza	Reviewed Chapter: 3 on 6/14/2009
I can see why the paternalistic argument is one that might not sit well and I can also see your reasoning for that and in a way, I do agree with you. However... there is always a however isn't there? :P However, the Jesuits used to say "Give me a boy until he is seven and I will give you the man"; and by this I mean to say that Tolkien himself was born into a primarily paternal society in 1892 which, while obviously not the Victorian era, was most definitely within the last decade of the Edwardian era. The Edwardians were perhaps not quite as 'anal' as the Victorians, but the paternal head of the house theory was still very much true and no more so than in the latter years of the 19th century in South Africa. The society of that time was very much dominated by the British who went out to South Africa as colonists and they were very much a male dominated group and also the Boer Dutch who were without a doubt a male dominated group and still are to be very great degree. Tolkien would have been very much influenced in his early years by the social mores and rules of those groups which did not consider females to be equal. Women, by and large, were the delicate little flowers there to be nurtured and provide the children. Preferably a son first to carry on the family name. Emancipation of the female was a long time coming in South Africa and many other African countries which were colonised by Europeans. These European colonists very much took their own societal mores with them when they arrived and because even though communication lines were starting to improve, these people still did not have regular enough contact with the changes going on in Edwardian society in the latter part of the 19th century and the earlier part of the 2oth century. Therefore they were to a very great degree out of touch with elements that were changing, such as the rise of the Suffragettes and the European political scenarios which were in a state of huge flux at that time. Especially in the early part of the 20th Century where events were rolling towards a war. Also, South Africa itself was in the midst of huge changes. They had already undergone a brief skirmish between 1889 and 1881 (just prior to Tolkien's birth) and another more significant war between 1899 and 1902. This was a significant event due to world reaction to the anti insurgency tactics used by the army at the time. It also led to a major change in approach to foreign policy by Britain who were looking about for allies at the time. Granted Tolkien was only three when he moved to England in 1895, but if you take the notion that a child's socialisation starts almost with birth and the societal mores of the time within his family and society - mores his parents would have brought with them - then the chances are that he was steeped within the paternal rather than the maternal ideal. This would only have altered after 1904 with the death of his father and the loss of the paternal head of house, a role taken over by his mother and compacted by their move to another maternally run household of their aunt. So there we have Tolkien up until the age of 9, born in the predominantly Afrikaner state of the Orange Free State (now the Free State) to parents rooted in the old Victorian paternal ways and in the midst of the very male dominated society of colonial Africa at that time. I think he must have been very confused once he was removed to England and the steadily growing freedom for women especially. His mother would have brought him up according to her ways, but with the loss of his father and her having to pull things together for him and his brother must have made her seem very strong and admirable to him. I think that therein lies his attitudes towards females in general and perhaps his mother in particular. On one hand, he obviously admired her strength and she became the most important person in his developing life, but on the other hand he was also struggling with the changing ideals towards women of the day and a desire to idealise women rather than to see that they were not this remote mysterious member of an alien species, but actual human beings as well. Especially at the age he was, on the cusp of adolescence, so to speak. It must have led to an extreme dichotomy for him; one that he seemed to want to try to resolve in his epic tales and portrayal of women in them. Possibly because he simply couldn't resolve them in the real world. When I read his work and see how he portrays females and the male interaction with them, I can see clear signs of this dichotomy. The influence of the paternalistic society where women were useful to be at the hearth and only fought when the menfolk were down and out and they had no choice in his portrayal of Rohirric society. The more lenient attitude of the Elven males towards their womenfolk. To them women were more than equal, just different and the role division always seems to me as one that Tolkien much preferred and couldn't see happening with ease among the real human society. Gondor was most definitely a male dominated land. A land which came about from the efforts of a very male dominated society from Numenor, still reeling from the horrors of Sauron and their king's actions in the matter of the Undying Lands and immortality. They were men's men and they needed women to carry on the line. (With of course the exception of the Queens who ruled them for a while - Tar Ancalime, Tar Talperian, Tar Vanimelde and Miriel Ar Zimphraphel). The stewards of Gondor quite obviously carried on the notion of paternalism amongst a constant state of war and I believe that it was because of being under constant threat of war that the women never quite ended up with the freedom to become their own person. That to me mirrors the situation in the years up to the First World War. It was only with the advent of that war that women started to come into their own properly. One might like to assume that the same thing would happen within Gondorian society with the advent of the King and the presence of an Elven female as their Queen - a woman who was used to being treated equally with men as far as most things were concerned. However even the Elves had a few difficulties with the notion of women fighting. They were trained in arms, but mostly did not fight unless they had to. These are just my thoughts on the matter of course. However I do think that Tolkien was quite a confused man where the opposite gender was concerned. :P Author Reply: Thanks for your "however." Howevers are always appreciated. ;-) That's a very valid point you're making about colonial families being cut of from the social and political mainstream of European thought. I hadn't considered that before. However (ha!), I would argue that any person, especially an intelligent one, is able to question and transcend their social conditioning. If Tolkien didn't develop a more differentiated attitude towards women, that must have been to a certain degree his own choice. But I don't really have a quarrel with Tolkien and I don't think he is a mysogynist, because - well, Eowyn! She gives a whopping speech that would count as at least proto-feminist and - and this is the crucial point - the author vindicates her by the way the plot develops. If she had listened to Aragorn, who'd have slain the witch king? In a way, Tolkien includes with this plot line the very discourse of feminism that had dominated much of the early part of the twentieth century. Aragorn represents the traditional, paternalist view, Eowyn the liberal, feminst one. But by turning the story the way he did, I think Tolkien is taking sides with Eowyn. If he had really wanted to endorse the paternalist stance, he would have made her fail. But she not only succeeds, but is "rewarded" with the clearly most attractive male lead in the whole book (and, as Dreamflower keeps telling me, the one Tolkien identified with) as a romance partner. So, I'm not even sure if we should say Tolkien was confused about women. He must have been aware of the discourse, and he gives us two love interests who are models of ideal womanhood, a traditional one in Arwen and a modern one in Eowyn, and both are portrayed in a positive way. But Eowyn's character is significantly more fleshed out and appealing. Maybe Tolkien saw that the "Eowyn Model" would prevail, but he still painted an attractive picture of the "Arwen Model" out of nostalgic attachment?

Raksha The Demon	Reviewed Chapter: 4 on 6/13/2009
Good points about Eru Iluvatar's essential aloofness from the mundane affairs of the world whose creation he began. I do recall that the Valar call upon him to cast down Numenor; so calling on Eru is a very big deal rather than a customary action. I'm non-Christian; and have always enjoyed LOTR. If, sometimes, I see Christian themes, I find they are not obvious, not preachy, and most can be universal, i.e. the importance of compassion and of hope over despair. Aragorn, who as an army leader and later a king at least fits the Old Testament model of the Messiah, likewise brings neither spiritual salvation nor a transformation of the social order. On the contrary, his reign reinstates and confirms the superiority of the Men of Numenorean descend over the “lesser” men. Tolkien has Aragorn call himself the last of the Numenoreans shortly before his death; which implies that his job was less to confirm the superiority of the Men of Numenor than to pass on the best of the Numenoreans to the Men of mixed blood who will come after him. At least that's how I look at his statement; which is odd; considering that Eldarion would have had some Numenorean blood, as would the descendants of Faramir and Imrahil and many others. It could be that Aragorn was the last man in whom the Numenorean "gift" of extremely long life was demonstrated, or at least the last man with that gift to die. There is no concept of spiritual salvation in LOTR, which is another Christian idea that one might have expected to find. I don't quite agree here; but I don't necessarily equate "spiritual" with "religious". It can be argued that the Nazgul (and Sauron himself) inflicted grave spiritual wounds to various individuals, through direct contact (Denethor using the Palantir) or the Black Breath (Faramir, and many others of Gondor and Rohan). Aragorn is able to bring some repair, some spiritual salvation; though not so much with Eowyn - he is more the agent of freeing her from the Shadow, by using the athelas, but it is Eomer whose voice she chooses to listen to; and neither of them fully heal her bruised spirit (Faramir does)... Another excellent and thought-provoking essay! Author Reply: Thanks for your comments. :) I think it might be tricky to define the term "spiritual" in this or indeed any context. When I mentioned "spiritual salvation" as a Christian concept I was thinking of the Evil that comes from within us. "Sin" in Christian theology is understood as "that which separates us from God." The examples you are giving are of an Evil that is inflicted from the outside. But, and this is one of my points I was trying to make, Tolkien very much projects Evil into the abominable Other throughout his work, so if we wanted to be psychoanalytic about it we would have to read those monsters and Dark Lords as the dark aspects of our own souls, in which case your argument would hold. Nice ambivalence, that. I like it!

Larner	Reviewed Chapter: 4 on 6/13/2009
One of the uniting features of the Inklings as they were originally constituted was that all of its members were attracted to Nordic mythology, culture, languages, etc. That Tolkien would construct a world in which there was a pantheon of sorts that is apparently modeled on the Norse gods is, I think, appropriate. Certainly in "On Fairy Stories" Tolkien made it clear that he feels subcreation is indeed the way in which we are made in the image of the Creator. And the only story he wrote that is truly a Christian allegory in any form is "Leaf by Niggle," in which his painting of the tree serves as a means of drawing folk further to the Mountains, which it is implied serve as the seat of the Creator. I found it interesting that Lewis borrowed the Mountains from that story for use in his "The Great Divorce." Author Reply: Thanks for mentioning these, I'll check them out sometime. I wrote this as a theologian rather than a Tolkien expert, so it's good to see the Tolkien experts adding their views. ;-)

Raksha The Demon	Reviewed Chapter: 3 on 6/13/2009
This is a fascinating series of essays, Virtuella. I'm not sure I'd call Aragorn a feminist's nightmare, because I don't think that feminism was prominent during the time when JRRT created and wrote him; even if women's rights were a concept that was explored on multiple fronts - was it mainstream in 1955? I doubt that many people thought seriously that there would be a female secretary of state in 50 years, much less a female vice president (who was also a serious presidential candidate) a few years after that, not to mention female judges and senators and governors (using the U.S. not Britain)...But I am hardly a scholar of women's rights or feminism (and I see them as occasionally different things), so I could be wrong here. Still, in fantasy and science fiction literature, strong women were the exception rather than the rule in the 50's. That being said, Aragorn does not seem to be used to thinking of and dealing with women as equals or even close to equals. This could have occurred because he waited so long to marry, and thus never had decades of living with a woman; or because the strongest parental influence in his life seems to have been his foster-father rather than his mother. Does this skewed perspective come from Aragorn's living, for much of his 90 years (at the time of LOTR), in rough and dangerous places where companions, when he had them, were more likely to be male. I don't know that some of the Northern Dunedain Rangers might not have been female; but female Rangers aren't mentioned, and I would think, given the declining population, there would have been a certain amount of pressure on Dunedain women of child-bearing age to get married and reproduce while their menfolk went out and risked their lives. (of course, there would have been a fair number of Dunedain widows; and I would think they would have been some pretty tough characters too, able to shoot and ride and track and hunt) Or does Aragorn's perspective come from some weakness in Gilraen. We know so little about her. We do know that she died of depression; mostly Aragorn-related. (I would think there might have been a lot of Northern Dunedain rather disappointed that their Chieftain didn't stay around for very long and lead them, and left for decades at a time to go explore Middle-earth; but most of them would have kept quiet, particularly if whatever regent/steward Aragorn left in charge did a good job) I see Gilraen as a woman who needed to be needed; and was blindsided by fate. She went from being the wife of the Chieftain and the mother of his heir (and probably making all the decisions about the household), a very needed person, to being dumped for 20 years in Imladris, a place where she would have been respected and cherished, but really not important to the social hierarchy or the running of the place. And culturally, it would have been a huge disconnect for Gilraen to live among the Elves with no other friends or family of her age...And eventually, when she returned to the Dunedain, she didn't seem to be very happy... Gilraen got the short end of the stick in terms of fate. It's no wonder that, being torn between cultures, and then having to keep worrying about an absent son who would have been in frequent danger, she was vulnerable to depression. I'm not saying she was a weak woman; she couldn't have been. But she was a woman whose position was taken away from her, and who never regained it, at least not the life she had wanted and been reared to expect. And Aragorn might have, at least subconsciously, since Gilraen was his major human female role model as a child and young man, thought of women as strong but passive, beings to be sheltered and to take care of men. Then there's Arwen - beautiful, intelligent, but very much a princess. She is the Lady of Rivendell, does killer embroidery, and hangs out with her grandparents in Lorien a lot. And while I think she and Aragorn did love each other deeply; Arwen becomes a prize to be won, a treasure from the 'king's hoard that must be bestowed upon the prince for his valorous deeds. I don't mind this, it's still a great story; and Aragorn should be lauded for his constancy and patience; but he spent half his life aiming to win Arwen; is it any wonder he thought of a beautiful and desirable young woman like Eowyn as the fairest thing in Eomer's realm? Aragorn is in a very difficult position when Eowyn, who is moving, in terms of emotion, towards train-wreck status, begs him to let her ride with him on the Paths of the Dead. He owes the duty of an ally, a brother-of-arms and a guest to Theoden and Eomer; he would betray that duty if he let Eowyn go riding into danger with them without Theoden King's permission (and as he told Eowyn, Theoden and Eomer were gone and wouldn't be there until the next day, and Aragorn had to leave ASAP). This is practically the only time he speaks to Eowyn as warrior to warrior in my opinion; but it's too little too late. Aragorn could have handled his earlier conversations with Eowyn better, spoken more directly and with less of what could be interpreted as condescension. In his defense, Aragorn was preparing to ride out on a very dangerous (as in men didn't usually come back from) mission, Minas Tirith was in terrible danger (not to mention much of Western Middle-earth); and he just could not spare longer time than he took to deal with a woman who wanted what he couldn't give (especially since he knew she had feelings for him). In contrast, Faramir had plenty of time when he met Eowyn; they were convalescing in the Houses; and Faramir wasn't allowed to take up his duties yet, just sit around and think of impending doom. I think he still would have treated Eowyn more like an equal if he had met her in Henneth-Annun; Faramir dealt wisely with the hobbits; but the fact is, Faramir did have the luxury of time when he met and became interested in Eowyn. I also think that Faramir was keenly perceptive and wanted to help her; and turned his considerable intellect to the task. I also think that Faramir would have still tried to help Eowyn if he believed that she was irrevocably in love with Aragorn rather than somewhat infatuated; because Faramir was a compassionate sort as well as someone who could appreciate Eowyn's beauty and bravery. I've always thought that Faramir and Eowyn would do well as a married couple; though there might have been a few bumps in the road. I've never seen Eowyn as a person who couldn't be happy unless she was off slaughtering Haradrim and Orcs. Even if Eowyn will be somewhat limited by marriage, she marries someone who will pay attention to her state of mind and try to give her as much freedom as he can within that marriage. I think of Eowyn as a restless spirit, someone who is not happy unless she has some meaningful and challenging things to do. And becoming the first Princess of a realm that they're going to literally create out of wilderness would be a challenge. And I'm sure she'll do a lot of riding and horse-breeding; not to mention queening it in Minas Tirith when Arwen and Aragorn go off on royal progresses... A somewhat rambling review, sorry. I enjoyed this essay very much; though I didn't agree with all your points. Author Reply: Feminist's nightmare - well, that title was meant to be rather tongue in cheek. ;-) The history of feminism is rather fascinating. I think the first "official" British feminist is Mary Wollstonecraft, whose "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" was published in 1792. As a moden school of thought, feminism stems from the French Revolution. Feminism was a big thing in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, but there was a conservative backlash after WWII. Very interesting thoughts you have on Gilraen, and also Arwen and Eowyn - "killer embroidery", hahahaha! Thanks for your comments.

Pryderi	Reviewed Chapter: 4 on 6/13/2009
Hi Virtuella I enjoyed reading this, potentially controversial, essay. I am, like one of your other reviewers, an atheist and yet I and others like me find Tolkien's works continually renewing and inspiring. As a result I certainly agree with the general thrust of your essay. There are two Tolkien quotes that come to my mind which I think might have added some force to your arguments. One is from letter No.131 In "The Letters of JRR Tolkien". It is in the famous letter to Milton Waldman at Collins when he thought they might publish The Silmarillion along with LotR while Allen and Unwin wouldn't. He is bemoaning the lack of an English mythology and trying to explain why the legends of King Arthur won't do for him: "For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in and explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons which I shall not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of religious and moral truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world." The other quote is from "The Faithful Stone" in the section on the Druedain in Unfinished Tales. In fact it is the last sentence in that very short story. I do not know but Tolkien wrote it late in life and I think there may be a subtext on his own role as "subcreator". It goes as follows: "Alas! If some power passes from you to a thing that you have made, then you must take a share in its hurts." I am sure that sentiment would ring just as true to a believer in a benevolent creator as to an atheistic parent like me. There's also Sauron and the Ring of course.... Pryderi. Author Reply: Thank you for the quotes - it's good to meet people who are more erudite than myself... ;-)

Shemyaza	Reviewed Chapter: 3 on 6/13/2009
I personally believe that one of the main reasons is not that Aragron is a misogynist, but that as a character he is incomplete. Most of the fanfiction that we read today where he is the subject matter idealise him in the way that only a fan of the character could do. Writers fill in the gaps left by Tolkien, so to speak. If Tolkien had actually filled in the gaps in his tale and not just left the poor man as a sort of 'chivalric template', someone who embodied Tolkien's own notions of how a true hero should 'sort of' manifest himself then nobody would have needed to fill in blanks and put their own connotation on what Aragorn would actually have been like as a real human being. I have been reading this story for many years now, 38 years to be exact, over and over again. Each time I read it I am struck by how flimsy Aragorn's characterisation actually is. I don't think that Tolkien wrote him as a misogynist, but he did place onto him all of the characterisations of the paternalistic society that Tolkien himself was born into and lived in. Women were meant to be idealised in the eyes of the males of that era, little boys were brought up firmly in the Madonna or Whore idiom so beloved of many societies despite the fact that feminism was more than rearing its ugly head at that stage. Tolkien was not a misogynist himself. He was a product of a paternal world which either idealised or denigrated the female gender according to their behaviour in the eyes of the world. His world was a place where the father figure and head of the household was to be respected and loved. The desire to emulate that father figure was paramount. It was also something encouraged by many women with children. This would explain the depth of Aragorn's leavetaking of Elrond, the only father figure he had ever really known, compared to that of his mother. To him Elrond was the head of the household, he was also his tutor and his chief support as he was groomed for his upcoming big role. Gilraen was a minor entity merely doing her duty as a mother by wiping his snotty nose or making sure that he had an bandage on his scraped knee. Gilraen was also brought up in such a paternalistic society, the beautifully butch and rugged Dunedain, rough around the edges but with an edge of kingship swirling around them, forever sweeping off on errantry and protecting the vulnerable while the women waiting patiently by the hearth and brought up the children. For them it was all about fighting the good fight. For her, the son she bore was her gift to the world, the potential saviour of Middle Earth simply because he was the last of the line of Kings. It's extremely unlikely that Gilraen would even have interfered with this apparent lack of respect or affection given to her compared to that given to Elfrond under the circumstances. She might have seethed a little in private, but like any good Dunedain wife she would have realised that her role was to sacrifice everything she held dear for the greater good. Who knows? She may well have muttered about it to herself in the night or private times, I know I would have, but Tolkien would have been as likely to flesh her character out emotionally as he was likely to do the same for any other character in the tale. They are all flimsy characterisations, except perhaps for Faramir, who I suspect was Tolkien's sop to placing himself in his own epic tale. I agree with the reviewer who said that they believe Faramir was a characterisation of Tolkien himself. I believe that the most compelling proof of this was the way he described how the character of Faramir just popped up out of nowhere. He hadn't intended Boromir to have a brother, but there he was striding in Ithilien and demanding to be written. As a writer myself I know how this can happen. You don't intend to add another character into the story, but sometimes those kind's of characters can be insistent creatures often born out of the author's own feelings and psyche. Authors are often compelled to put a version of themselves into their stories. Out of all the characters, I often felt that Faramir was one of the most fleshed out, much more so than Aragorn. He always seemed the most human to me and because of that, his marriage to Eowyn the spendid shield maiden, seems very unreal. An extremely unlikely pairing, perhaps even an afterthought of a pairing or a tying off of a loose end. After all, there she was, the Shield maiden, Eowyn The Witch King Slayer. What on earth does she do for an encore in the midst of the testosterone laced hero class of Middle Earth? What better way to dispose of this early feminist than to soften her down with love and marry her off to the sensitive Faramir who will be the saving of her from a life of feminism? The women of Lord of the Rings, with perhaps the exception of Galadriel who did have some sort of 'back story', were all parts of the composite that Tolkien considered to be the 'ideal woman'. Unfortunately like many males of his era and a few even now, he failed to understand that women were actually human beings with the same frailties and character flaws of any other human being. He didn't hate women in the way a misogynist would, his problem seemed to be that he idealised them far too much. And therein, in my opinion, lies Aragorn's seeming problem with his attitude towards the feminine gender. Arwen is the ideal he holds in his head, the bright true flame of ideal womanhood, beautiful, remote, wise, glamorous and always a little out of reach. Mother, Goddess, Wife and Woman all rolled into one nice neat package. Although Tolkien wants us to see the final coming together of these two as a passionate melding of man and woman, it always falls short of that for me. I can't see Arwen melting into Aragorn's embrace on the wedding night. What I see is him on his knees kissing the hem of her dress and struggling to overcome this worship he felt of this creature who was now within his grasp. Aragorn has Arwen on a pedestal. For him and many men (like Tolkien himself), this is where they want their women to be, mysterious, slightly out of reach, slightly unobtainable and never to be actually understood. The idea of actually understanding a woman actually terrifies the life out of most men. Epic tales are all about the times and the deeds done in those times, not necessarily about the actual people. The characters in an epic tale are necessary evils who are there to drive the story on. They have to be given names and some brief history for the reader of the tale to identify a little with them, but in-depth characterisation was not one of Tolkien's better talents. he was driven by the glory and the tragedy of a splendid ripping yarn set in a world where fantasy holds the reigns. His tale of Middle Earth is larger than life, yet strangely his characters never read to me as larger than life. They pale into insignificance against the backdrop of epic sweeps of land and descriptions of great deeds of derring do. Aragorn and his little group of heroes may be victorious at the end but they never rise above the actual tale itself. They just pop up here and there as the vehicle to drive the story. In my humble opinion, Aragornn didn't hate women, neither did Tolkien for that matter. Women were just a necessary component of the epic tale of Lord of the Rings. If Tolkien had fleshed his characters out a little more and gave us an idea of what they may have been ACTUALLY feeling and thinking, perhaps this element of apparent misogynism wouldn't be so insistent. Author Reply: Wow, thank you so much for this extremely detailed and thought-provoking review - I feel that it has more merit than my own little essayette. Which, in a way, is great, because I mostly wrote it to stimulate exactly this kind of debate. I’m inclined to agree with you on the structural cause of Aragorn’s lack of insight. Characterization in LOTR is indeed often flimsy, and I’ve always felt that Tolkien’s world was much more compelling than his characters. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Tolkien appeals so much to fanfiction writers – there is just so much left to be fleshed out. Some fanfic authors have created rather compelling portraits of Aragorn that are clearly superior to the original, and those who write about post-war Aragorn almost inevitably invent a much more real Arwen. It’s interesting that you mention the Madonna or Whore model, because that is exactly a pattern Tolkien doesn’t use. Allhis female characters are idealized (apart from Lobelia, but she’s not a whore either and even becomes a minor heroine in the end). Given how much use he makes of the mechanism of projecting Evil into the abominable Other, it is interesting that those Others are all males. I have some quarrel with what you say about the paternalistic society. Tolkien was not a Victorian. The time he lived in was not one in which those stereotypical gender roles where widely accepted, on the contrary, they were fiercely fought over. So it is not correct to say that Tolkien simply wrote in the spirit of his time, rather he chose to take a particular side – the reactionary one. (This is hardly surprising, given the generally conservative turn of his mind.) I agree with you on the cause (or at least one of the causes) of that attitude, namely the inability to cope with the notion that women are fully human. You have an interesting take on Eowyn. I think she is one character that I have always, maybe unconsciously, fleshed out in my own mind. But yes, on closer inspection, there isn’t really that much characterization in the books. “What on earth does she do for an encore in the midst of the testosterone laced hero class of Middle Earth?” That sentence made me laugh! ;-) I also had to grin at the image of Gilraen muttering under her breath about Aragorn. Thanks again, it was a pleasure to read your thoughts!

Larner	Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2009
BTW--looking at your response to Dreamflower's comments--you asked about Frodo stabbing the Witch-king. He ATTEMPTED to stab the Witch-king, but the only damage he did was to slash the Nazgul's cloak. Aragorn comments that he knows this is true as all blades perish that cut into the Nazgul's undead flesh, and Frodo's blade was still whole until he fell from Asfaloth on the Imladris side of the Bruinen, when it broke under him. Again, I love the thoughts you are inspiring! But I gotta get to bed--I barely slept last night, and have my LONG day tomorrow--I gotta get some sleep if I'm to be any good with my clients at all! Author Reply: I looked it up when I got home and realized how I had got muddled up there!

Larner	Reviewed Chapter: 2 on 6/12/2009
In many ways the House of Tom Bombadil is also a locus amoenus, as here, surrounded by rain and the Old Forest, with the influence of the Withywindle close at hand, is also found a hallowed place of safety and regeneration, a lesser one than Caras Gadadhon, but in many ways a foreshadowing of the later visit to Lorien. And in discussing water as a symbol of death, do not forget that the Sundering Sea serves this function, also. Frodo leaves to find healing and regeneration, if he can accept it once he is brought where it might come to him; but in so doing he becomes as one who is dead to those who loved him. Only Sam has the hope of seeing him once more in the body; for all others he and Bilbo are indeed lost forever to them. And in the rolling back of the silver rain-curtain, we have another symbol of spiritual cleansing that helps wash away Frodo's humanity, preparing him to accept the new reality he knows as a guest of the immortals, not quite an immortal himself as they are but still sharing in much of their reality for the time remaining to him. Again, a most thoughtful essay, and one that speaks deeply to my own love of mythological imagery. Author Reply: I had thought whether or not Bombadil's house was a locus amoenus, but it seemed to me to be a bit too - rustic? Certainly someone stomping about in huge big boots is not what you expect to find in the locus amoenus, though Goldberry, of course, fits in nicely. Good point about the Sundering Sea and its connection with death. Thanks again, and I hope you get a good nights' sleep!

Larner	Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2009
That the "topos" or female archetypes are represented by these women within LOTR is an excellent observation. Certainly the fact that the Witch-king's vulnerability is hidden behind his own hype is well supported by what we see as happening within the story. There was a tale that made the MEFAs I think the second year, one in which the Witch-king is starting to boast how he cannot be felled by the hand of a Man, and suddenly Gimli, Legolas, Gandalf, Ioreth, and I think even Shadowfax all point out that, technically speaking they are none of them Men and therefore as capable of seeing to his ending as Merry and Eowyn. I think you'd enjoy it! Thanks for the thought-provoking message. Have been dealing with more crises at work, so am only now having time to catch up on writing designed to make me think! I think I'll read one more before I turn off the light and go to sleep so hopefully I'll be up in time to get to work by seven thirty! Author Reply: Yeah, I'm always one to look for topoi... It's a nice game. ;-) I read that story you mention the other day. It just goes to show that the witch king must have been rather intellectually challenged. Thanks for taking the time to read and review this in spite of your stressful time at work. Hope things will ease up soon!

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