tell me some stuff about gender roles in lotr please im writing an article
oh my goodness thank you for asking me this i have so many thoughts
before i begin my ramble i want to clarify that i am not considering tolkiens intention at all. i literally don't care what he was "trying to do" im just interpreting what he did! this is like literary analysis 101 but i felt the need to clarify lmao
while tolkien did not have many female characters in his stories (im thinking about arwen, eowyn, and galadriel rn), his female characters were unique and fairly well-rounded considering the lack of words he commited to them.
arwen: i struggle with arwen a bit, simply because i feel she is often used to push aragorns plot, and doesn't really have that much conflict of her own. the main conflict she has is choosing between a mortal and immortal life which is only a conflict because of aragorn! while i do think she is an interesting character, she is unable to shine because of her lack of development. she has a lot of potential, and i love the way that people talk about her in the fandom, but within the original text she falls flat, and into the shadows.
galadriel: galadriel is a really cool character. HOWEVER, she is used solely to develop the emotional angle in regards to the elves fleeing middle-earth. she is mostly used as a world-building tool to inform the characters and the audience of what is currently happening and what has happened in the past. additionally, i think there's something to be said about how she just infodumps to and then gives gifts to the male characters. she is treated less as an individual and more as a narrative device. this would be fine if she wasnt one of so few female characters within the series. i really like the way shes depicted as this incongruent being even within the world of elves, but it also alienates her and makes her a sort of idealized woman? if that makes sense? anyways, moving on...
eowyn: eowyn is fucking awesome. her development is mostly well done considering how little time was commited to her plot within the original text. her speaking about fearing a cage is really powerful, especially for the time this story came out. she represents the way women are often overlooked in history/war, and resists men's attempts to restrain her. i think overall, her character is great considering the other female characters. however, i do think tying her to aragorn put her slightly in an arwen-esque position, especially to audience members who maybe aren't reading too deeply? maybe im wrong but idk. i like her, i think shes really cool, but i wish she wasn't like "inspired" by a man in a sense?
in conclusion, i think that these female characters within lotr are representative of the time, and it is not suprising that they were written in such a way. i think that the movie adaptation attempted to help arwen and eowyn by giving them more screen time, but in doing so (HOT TAKE) messed with the plot weirdly. for example, by letting arwen save frodo, his development was stunted. and because of this, arwen had more moments than in the book so they felt the need to include her and then she just became an object of sexual desire for aragorn in the second film. anyways, tolkien's female characters are really interesting and developed decently, but are simply victims of ignorant writing and suffer because of this.
