The Perception of Women in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Englisches Institut), course: Gender, language: English, abstract: Since the first film of Peter Jackson's trilogy, 'Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring', was released, debates about the role of women in Tolkien's work have emerged again. Fans of Tolkien praise the writer's deep understanding of the female mind while on the other side his critics mourn about a medieval and chauvinistic perception of women in his books. In this paper, I want to examine the role of women in Tolkien's most popular and successful book The Lord of the Rings. In the first chapter I will describe the female characters as the y are presented in the book. I will put special emphasis on how the women's sexuality is presented. In the second chapter, I will analyse the most important character traits that distinguish the 'good' from the 'bad' women in The Lord of the Rings: subordination, self- denial and weakness. The third chapter will deal with the vices that are represented by some of the female characters: temptation and evil. In the last chapter I will conclude the paper by summarising and discussing the main arguments of the first three chapters. I will also briefly discuss the consequences of such a presentation of women in literature. Tolkien gave birth to different kinds of fantasy races in The Lord of the Rings. I am aware of the fact that not all of the females in his work are humans. However, I found it less disturbing to the flow of the paper to speak of women rather than females all the time. I hope the reader will excuse that.