The Frame Will Not Fit the Story if Built by the Reader

In class, we have long battled the topic of Tolkein’s sexism, with supporters often pointing to Eowyn’s fate as a wife and not a warrior as the prime example of a sexist trope not typically reserved for men. While I cannot deny the pervasiveness of sexist tropes in American literature, I do wish to approach this topic in an alternate format. Is Tolkien truly sexist, or is the frame that we apply to his story – based on our understanding of stereotypical sexist roles in our society – not fit the story because it is not the frame Tolkien created for his world?

As has been reiterated many times before, Tolkien adores storytelling through frames. Hence, the entirety of The Lord of the Rings is told through the perspective of hobbits, even though hobbits retain very little perspective of the outside world. For a world built vast and detailed, this may seem strange; why pick the group of people that engages with none of this world when telling a story that deals with the fate of the entirety of this world? But Hobbits value something that Men and Elves do not, gratitude for the everyday lived experience, which results in the ability to see elements of good even when it appears there are none. As Sam rids himself of his gear with Frodo at the foot of Mount Doom, he attempts to alleviate Frodo’s pain with positive memories:

‘Do you remember that bit of rabbit, Mr. Frodo?’ he said. ‘And our place under the warm bank in Captain Faramir’s country, the day I saw an oliphaunt?’

If Samwise Gamgee was solely remarking about his love of food, he would have cited many of the glorious feasts he attended, including but not limited to Bilbo’s birthday party. But, Sam cites a ‘bit’ of rabbit – not the whole animal – as the aspect of the memory he cherishes the most, almost as if the small quantity of the rabbit is the element that makes this particular moment so significant to Sam. Specifically, Sam understands that the limited enjoyment of the rabbit made tasting it all the more special, solely because the moment was small and fleeting. To Elves or Men, a ‘bit of rabbit’ is such a small – and assumed to be meaningless – part of existence that it hardly becomes noticed, especially when one is concerned with the Fate of one’s own race on Middle-Earth. Sam ends by recounting the day he saw the Men of the South pass by with their oliphaunts, an animal he has always wanted to see. The circumstances surrounding this memory are not pleasant; The Men of the South would surely act with cruelty towards the hobbits if they had spotted them, and Faramir did not give any inclination that he had kind intentions when he captured the hobbits. With these two factors in mind, this memory should have been overshadowed by the fear that the hobbits felt that day, yet Sam chooses to focus on this small and fleeting moment and frame the memories with it. Furthermore, the concept that Sam even appreciates seeing an oliphaunt – an elephant-esque animal bred for war by men who follow evil – shows just how much he, and other hobbits, can pull the little aspects of good out of the much greater bad. Tolkien wants this mindset to be his frame from The Lord of Rings; he wants the readers to view this world, no matter how evil it could grow to be, as still having glimmers of goodness at the heart if only one stops to look in the same fashion as Samwise Gamgee.

Like with hobbits, Tolkien applies a frame to men and women; the frame is the axiom that the ultimate goal is always to become a spouse and a healer. Because women are already encouraged to fulfill those roles in society due to systemic sexism, this may come across as Tolkein’s own internalized misogyny materializing in The Lord of the Rings. However, Tolkein’s egalitarian application of this frame to all genders implies that, regardless of his classification of the differences between the genders, he wants them to have the same reward. When Tolkien writes to his son Michael about women on March 6, 1941, he advises his son to know of “the one great thing to love on Earth: the Blessed Sacrament ….. There you will find romance, glory, honour, and fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth …” As Michael Tolkein is a man, this quote shows that Tolkein clearly sees marriage between men and women as the ultimate goal because it provides one with romance, glory, honor, and fidelity, regardless of gender. Tolkien does more than promise marriage as the ultimate reward; he also shows that healing is on par. In Chapter 8 of Book 5 in The Return of The King, Aragorn heals Eowyn, and the versions of the phrase “The hands of the King are the hands of the healer, and so shall the rightful King be known” are touted three times throughout the chapter. By putting healing as a requirement for the right to rule and reiterating this point so frequently, Tolkien shows that he views healing as an essential element of worthiness, one that is so important that lack of it means someone cannot attain power. We typically think of power as the manifestation of one’s own worthiness; Tolkien is telling us that we are wrong – for it is the ability to heal that makes one truly worthy. Once more, ‘the King’ (invoking a male ruler) implies that the essential element of healer, stereotyped as a woman’s job in our culture, determines both a man’s and a woman’s worthiness. Therefore, healer is an egalitarian role in Tolkien’s world and demonstrates the worthiness of everyone by Tolkien’s frame.

As we have established that Tolkien frames the roles of spouse and healer as egalitarian rewards in his world, it can be concluded that he gives Eowyn the ultimate reward when she marries Faramir and retires from battle to become a healer, just in the way that Aragorn receives the ultimate reward when he marries Arwen and rules/heals Gondor. In Tolkien’s world, the rewards for these two heroes are the same regardless of their gender because Tolkien fundamentally believes that everyone who has proven themselves deserves this specific reward. It is only when one removes Tolkien’s frame and applies the frame of our society – in the form of a history of sexist gender roles – onto the female characters do we see the phenomenon where the frame no longer resonates with the reader, but that is solely because this frame was never meant for The Lord of the Rings in the first place. Therefore, The Lord of The Rings is only sexist if one frames the story themselves, not with the frame Tolkien provides.

-SCJ