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GUYSSS. How did I possibly miss this? Seriously I WAS EVEN TAGGED! Ahh. I feel so behind now, and my excitement over Tolkien is beginning to make me semi-illiterate.

 

@karthmin, very nice essay, I really enjoyed it! While I’ve thought a lot about Tolkien vs. Lewis, I don’t think the topic of femininity has come up. Oddly enough, though Lewis has more (and if you ask me, better developed/more realistic) female characters, Tolkien’s women are the ones that make you notice he has a definite view of women and respect for them.

Eowyn is marvelous! Though the world would like you to believe she is a strong, manly woman, that is not at all what Tolkien was doing. I’d think that would be pretty clear when her healing and final peace is when she finally makes peace with her femininity? Whatever. People see what they want to see.

My sisters and I are doing a LotR read through. We read a chapter every two weeks and comment on it. It’s great!! I HIGHLY recommend it. The fact that I just read the entire trilogy would not deter me at all from participating in this group, if we decide to do something like that :).

@morreafirebird So…I have a female character who is a Dragon Protector by heritage, but one of the few left in her family. She ends up fighting in a special dragon riding fleet and seeing active combat. So I kinda get where you’re coming from :). Femininity is a mindset, not an action or even a lifestyle. Generally, it DOES come out in lifestyle choices, but that’s not always the case/not always possible. Some ways I end up showing her femininity are:

Backstory (before she assumes this essentially masculine role).

Her interaction with characters.

How characters interact with her.

How she reacts to her job as a soldier (Women fight differently/have different impulses and emotions than men do when thinking about battle/during a battle/in the aftermath).

A strong, masculine, (honestly bordering on stereotypical) male as the leading man.

A revulsion, at times, to what has to be done.

 

Another thing that I don’t think enters into my story, but it is something I’ve observed in my own life is a desire to be pretty after you’ve done a messy job. For years, my ritual after we’d done our yearly chicken butchering (a terribly gross, messy, unladylike profession, at best), was to get inside, take a shower, put body spray on, and change into a skirt. It didn’t dawn on me for many years that I did it because I wanted to feel pretty and feminine after I’d gotten done killing things and being elbow-deep in the body cavity of a bloody animal. (TMI? I hope not. I am sincerely sorry if anyone is grossed out by that).

Anyway, I hope that helps? It’s at all profound–I’m a lot better at showing what I’m talking about by examples rather than describing it.