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Theme of power in lord of the rings
Female characters in tolkiens lord of the rings
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“The Lord of the Rings” is a perfect example of a myth about gender-roles. Gender-roles are very much entangled in this trilogy because power and who it is associated with is important. Often times in the movie we hear “take the women and children to safety” followed by men leaving fully geared for battle. This depicts women as people who cannot defend themselves. While at the same time we see a woman break this notion and chose to go to war with the men to die for what she holds dear. Another case of gender-roles is through the hobbits who are depicted as powerless children yet are able to achieve tremendous feats. Through these cases we can see that the cultural truth-value from “The Lord of the Rings” is that of “gender should not dictate what one can or cannot do”.
The hobbits, while not a gender but a different race, are often
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They are shown as people who prefer their safe and comfortable Shire. We get to see that their size is no larger than a child and that their capabilities are no more than a woman in the movies, as they were relegated to wielding daggers because swords were too large. Yet Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippen venture away from their comfort in order to save Middle Earth. These four hobbits bear the task of taking the ring to Mt. Doom for its destruction. These four hobbits rise above what others may think of them to accomplish tasks that many would deem them incapable of doing. We see this concept again through Eowyn, the niece of King of Rohan, Theoden. During battle women were expected to take the children and run to safety while men would fight. Eowyn thought differently. She believed that if
Like in Gilgamesh and the Iliad, women help encourage and influence the protagonists to be the heroes and protectors they are meant to be. Adventures and wars
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender plays a very significant role. While women were not the most powerful gods nor the strongest or wisest of humans, they still had tremendous influence. Though the main characters of the story, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are male, women did not play a necessarily minor role. With all the women that play a role in the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender is a topic worthy of discussion.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a story of Gilgamesh, a man who was two-thirds god that was saved by companionship. Gilgamesh was a cruel and careless king, who spent his time raping women, exhausting citizens, and conquering foes and foreign lands until he met, fought and was guided by his great friend and soul mate, Enkidu. With the help of Enkidu and his influence, he learned compassion as well as wisdom and integrity, and eventually Gilgamesh became a great and fair king. Though the story focuses mainly on Gilgamesh and his friendship with Enkidu, there are several roles played by women that help to make and move the story along. Without these important women who show great strength and feminine qualities despite being oppressed by the patriarchy, Gilgamesh would not have been the great king he was meant to be.
Throughout many fairytales, Cinderella more evidently, there is the stigma of male roles and female roles. The man is the prince, the knight in shining armor, the strong protector and able provider, and the woman is the princess. Dainty and innocent, weak and capable only of looking pretty, fostering children and maintaining appearances of house and home. These roles of placement have been around long before fairy tales, and they’ll be around long after fairy tales, but the inclusion of these roles through characters in fairy tales does nothing but enforce the idea that this is the way things are meant to be, and women who do not assume these roles are wrong and unworthy. In her article, Orenstein refers to Cinderella as “the patriarchal oppression of all women”, and she is exactly right (Orenstein “What’s wrong with Cinderella?”). The impression left of these gender stereotypes travels off the pages of the fairy tale and into the real world when studies show that there is a “23% decline in girls’ participation in sports and other rigorous activity … has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine” (Orenstein “What’s wrong with Cinderella?”). The blatant disregard for equality in these stories can be summed up with a term Orenstein coined, “relentless resegregation of childhood”, which ultimately defines what it means to be a boy or a girl in the terms of set behaviors and life duties (Orenstein “What’s wrong with Cinderella?”). Whether it be Cinderella or any other princess, the fairy tale business makes it a point to create a place for women with their stories, and unfortunately that “place” is demeaning and still practiced
Just as this genre exemplifies the masculine ideal, it also promotes the feminine ideal, largely by casting female characters who do not meet this ideal in an antagonistic light, and thus maintains the male-dominant system of the societies which produced these works. This paper therefore argues that female characters in epic poetry, namely The Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s Odyssey, and Vergil’s Aeneid, play the role of an antagonistic “Other” group by employing their agency to act beyond the established gender roles of their societies, thereby disrupting the social order and creating obstacles for the male protagonists.
Homer endorsed the dominating belief of his time concerning women by treating the female characters unequally and differently compared to the male characters in The Odyssey
In conclusion, the development of the folktales leads to the obtaining of ideas about gender. In many ways our society supports the idea that women seem underestimated as well as physically and mentally weak in comparison with the men who is portrayed as intelligent and superior. This can be shown in many ways in the different versions of this folktale through the concepts of symbolic characters, plot and narrative perspective.
In considering the relationship between the meanings of myths and their representation of women, we learned that the major role in shaping the narratives was played by men.
For one, Tolkien is not sexist because he illustrates his female characters as growing individualists. Three of the most prominent of these female characters are Eowyn, Galadriel, and Arwen from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Once Eowyn is knocked back from the rejection of Aragorn, she “must search for healing” (Enright 93). Because Eowyn is forced away from a companionship, she must learn to become an individual in order to be successful. The power of leadership is a motif throughout the stories of the Lord of the Rings and “Galadriel is a stronger embodiment of this power than her husband Celeborn”
“Tears aren’t a woman’s only weapon. The best one’s between her legs. Learn how to use it.”
Eve is the mark of the waning day, the rising moon, and the moment of darkness in between. Yet, Eve is also the first female: the bringer of taint to the pure lands of Eden. The homologous term for these two distinct concepts stem from a socially ingrained aversion to women because of an association with them and the fall of light and purity. This relation with darkness for the female gender is the antithesis of feminist ideals and employed in classic literature such as the Odyssey. Accordingly, Homer, in his epic on the journey home, portrays female characters as distractions through seduction preventing the male characters from achieving their goals. This association of taint with the female sex is what Margaret Atwood, in her poem “Siren
Throughout literature, authors employ a variety of strategies to highlight the central message being conveyed to the audience. Analyzing pieces of literature through the gender critics lens accentuates what the author believes to be masculine or feminine and that society and culture determines the gender responsibility of an individual. In the classic fairytale Little Red Riding Hood, the gender strategies appear through the typical fragile women of the mother and the grandmother, the heartless and clever male wolf, and the naïve and vulnerable girl as little red riding hood.
The poem “Iliad,” by Homer, is known for its violence between men during a war, but under that violence, is the different type of women who play a significant role in the poem (Homer 189). This poem’s narrative seems to show a male dominated world between the Greek commanders. This male dominated world cannot happen on its own, thus the different background roles of women are needed in order to make sense of all this rage. As the University of Michigan article How Do Women Make Their Way Into This Cycle states, “They are seen as the objects of both lust and domesticity, yet they are also used to excuse war, cause conflict, and display the power of men” (www.umich.edu). The focus in this poem steers towards the rage between the men, but this rage most of the time is inspired and initiated by a woman. The women of Iliad play a significant role in the poem such as war prizes, male hero partners, and women gods.
In contemporary society, feminism is emerging as a theory of social construct. In literature it is often challenging to discover female characters that go beyond the limits of marginalized female stereotypes and roles as a means to transgress beyond societal norms. Women are characterized as subordinate objects, amid the dominant patriarchal nature entrenched amid the epic. In The Ramayana, women are portrayed as powerless objects that succumb to the manipulation of men as the text portrays a false empowerment of women, which ultimately succumb to common archetypes accustomed to women in literature; implementing a hierarchy of gender that institutionalizes male dominance amid female inferiority. The women of The Ramayana struggle to oppose the systemic patriarchy and pursue a pathway towards attaining dynamic elements of power, that enable their ability to embody autonomous authority. In Valmiki’s The Ramayana, while women appear to be empowered, ultimately they are feeble instruments utilized to fulfill the desires of men.
In conclusion, the novel Lord of the Rings is chalked full of unlikely heroes that all contribute to the destruction of the one ring—except Sauron, obviously—and these heroes can be found all around Middle Earth. Be it the small Hobbits from the shire, or the fair Elves from the middle of Mirkwood forest. Unlikely or strange people play huge parts in the novel. Starting with The Hobbits from the shire, small weird creatures and then a group of friends that call themselves the fellowship of the ring; and ending with smaller unlikely characters such as Tom Bombadil and Barlima Buttbur. The message that J.R.R Tolkien sends us is that heroes do not always have to be tall, smart, good-looking or handsome they come in all shapes and sizes.