gildatheplant: liliaenbaggins: And she answered: ‘All your words are but to say: you are a wom
gildatheplant:liliaenbaggins:And she answered: ‘All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.’ ‘What do you fear, lady?’ he asked. ‘A cage,’ she said. ‘To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.’I find it strange that Tolkien included so few women in his texts, yet, when he did bother to write them, they were often given powerful speeches like this one. It makes me sad because he had so much potential for creating many great female characters, but chose not to. Instead, we’re given a universe where there are dozens upon dozens of great male characters and only a tiny number of ladies. Not to mention the whole Aldarion and Erendis narrative in UT which is one of the most affecting and underrated (in fandom, at least) stories in the whole canon and one of the most telling of *why* Tolkien chose to pursue stories with male characters. Interestingly, it’s a very similar narrative to Elwing and Earendil where the husband leaves home for *great things* and discards the wife, whose bitterness is completely sympathetic. Unlike the Peredhil story, the Numenor story has a daughter, Ancalime who essentially fell in love with a man who courted her under false pretenses and married him partly under pressure from her cousin, Soronto (Interestingly, Ancalime/Hallacar tale has almost the exact same outline as Tale of Cardenio in Don Quixote where male lover pursued the loved while pretending to be a shepherd). Ancalime becomes Ruling-Queen of Numenor and not always fond of her husband; irrespective what Tolkien thought personally about “Ruling Queens”, Tolkien actually manages to follow through the narrative of, essentially, some of the worse consequences of patriarchy in her story, even as much as he creates a character like Eowyn. -- source link
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