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@karthmin

Wow, reading your thoughts here just made my brain really excited xD Let me see if I can formulate some comments that make sense…

First, I love your analysis of the women Tolkien wrote about. It is interesting that he mainly portrayed only two opposites, one true femininity (nurturer, etc.) and the other false femininity (destroyer, etc.). He did seem to avoid the one we find most in literature today, what I would call a radical feminism (not trying to get political 😛 ) where “great women” equals “being like a man.” Tolkien seemed to cover that somewhat with Eowyn, perhaps even hinting that this sort of distorted femininity isn’t completely the result of corruption by evil, but rather by a perverted or failed masculinity such as Eowyn finds herself surrounded by.

However, I don’t think that was of primary interest to Tolkien regarding women. I don’t pretend to know a whole lot about Tolkien, but I do know that he wanted to write a great myth. That’s where I believe part of his motivation came from to write about women like he did. Think about old myths like Hesiod’s Theogony, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid. Talk about women portrayed negatively. They were given to men as a punishment (Hesiod). Helen was the whole reason for the Trojan war, which triggered Odysseus’ wanderings and Aeneas’ exile. You have multiple female figures in the Odyssey which prevent Odysseus from getting home, and Dido in the Aeneid keeps Aeneas from following the gods’ commands. You have a couple good women (like Odysseus’ wife) put in here and there, but the overall view of the ancients was that women were evil. (except the goddesses, of course, because all the men loved them 😛 ). I haven’t read any other myths beyond those, but I imagine they’re generally similar in their portrayal of women.

I can just imagine Tolkien reading all those myths and feeling pretty exasperated. So I think when he started to write his myth, he consciously set out to contradict the previous myths with a Christian view of women. Rather than portraying all or most of them like Eve (cause of the Fall), he wanted to show women’s role in the story of redemption by introducing women who played the role of a Second Eve (assisting in the undoing of the damage done by the Fall with a yes to goodness and a no to evil). Previous myths had examples of corrupted men and very virtuous men, but not of women; Tolkien perhaps wanted to have a myth that did.

Lewis, on the other hand, didn’t set out to write a myth, so I don’t think contrasting with the ancients’ view of women was as important in his mind. Instead, Lewis set out to write an allegory (a pretty strict one, I think, but brilliantly done). I don’t think he could have, without breaking the allegory and going into symbolism (based on my understanding of that technique) have made his primary villain male (talking mainly about the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). Jadis plays the part of Eve, offering Edmund (playing the part of Adam) temptation, which he takes. Lewis could have switched it up and had a man offer a girl the same temptation instead, but then I think Lewis would have broken away from his allegory (in addition to making a weightier situation by having a young girl held hostage in the castle of a king, or further breaking the allegory by just sticking with a king as the villain and still have Edmund there).

I think Lewis’ goal was simply to portray the story of salvation, not distinguish how men and women are redeemed or corrupted in different ways. Lewis certainly didn’t make his characters neither male nor female, but I just don’t think that masculinity versus femininity was his main focus.

What I do find fascinating is how Lewis and Tolkien tackled the same subject in such radically different ways, yet both results were equally as powerful. You have Lewis presenting what appears to be a simple allegory of man’s fall and Christ’s sacrifice to save man. He puts the main story of the Bible into relatively short children’s tale, yet still powerfully captures the significance of it.

Then you have Tolkien, who seems to tackle the same thing, but introduce the complexities and various layers of the same story. His works (even excluding the Silmarillion), smash together the Old Testament, the Gospels, and Revelation. You have Gandalf as Christ the Prophet (reminiscent of Elijah, Isaiah, and Daniel in the OT), Frodo as Christ the Priest (symbolizing Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary), and Aragorn as Christ the King (bringing up imagery from Revelation regarding the Second Coming). Yet if you read into the symbolism, there’s still the same message, pointing towards Christ’s triumph over sin and death and our redemption.

Anyway, ramble over xD I’m really glad you made your comment on this, as it made me realize a lot of things about LotR and Narnia. Now just to find time to reread them 😛