The Hobbit: Why Are There No Women in Tolkien’s World?

How about the fact that there aren't any black people or Asians? Why aren't they complaining. 

This is ridiculousness,  why does the author complain so much. Who cares, nobody even thought of this. This author is way to feminist to be in the field of journalism, stop poisoning the people's minds! 

Would I care if a new movie came out with women the dominant characters..No, I would not. Stop being so hypersensitive and stop forcing this hypersensitivity on people. Grow up already. 

It wasn't a politically correct necessity for Tolkien to include women in this adventure at the time.  I get irritated when the PC expectation is pushed too far such as when Deanna Troi fights and bests a Klingon in hand-to-hand battle in Star Trek the Next Generation.  

Tolkien purposely excluding female characters to represent a fictional dimension without the necessary influence of femininity this is highlighted by the marriage between Arwen and Aragorn at the end  the coming together of femininity and masculinity and the end of reign of darkness.

Ha ha, you bunch of boy geeks.

Ok.  I've read the books many times.  I've watched all of the films several times.  I even did the marathon of all three extended versions of LOTR in one day.  I love them, ok?

But because I'm a woman, I notice what you fanboys don't.  When you defend Galadriel, Arwen and Eowen's strength, beauty and power, you fail to notice that you are identifying the very reason that females are poorly represented in these texts.  They are all strong, beautiful and powerful.  C'mon!  They don't have any flaws and they're devastatingly hot!  They don't have kids.  You never see them eating.  They have no sense of humour. They're kind of a bummer, from a female point of view.

Totally agree with everyone that says Tolkien's writing is a product of the culture of the time.  Big ticks for those comments.

I just want to tell the rest of you that you're a bunch of funny boy geeks.  We can tell from how you talk about Arwen that you're crying about it.  Calm down.

"But I was not prepared for the extreme skewing of the sexes in The Hobbit,"

Then you clearly had not read the book. Someone posted elsewhere that the reason "The Hobbit" is all-male is that women simply don't do that sort of thing. Certainly not in Tolkien's time, anyway. Sexist as that comment is, the fact that you yourself never actually read it as a child - that "that sort of thing" did not interest you - rather supports his case.

This article shouldn't exist... Tolkein's world, for those who actually have read the books and watched the movies, have some of the most powerful woman characters in any genre. The Lady Gladriel who is wisest and most powerful (arguably) of the Elves. Arwen of Rivendel who had great influence and was a go-to for advisement for Arogorn. Eowyn who literally did what no man could do by destroying the most powerful of all Ring Wraiths. Not to mention the stories of the Silmarilion! And the fact you mentioned Pixar! Brave has 2 leading female roles, Toy Story has a main female role, Jesse (not including bopeep), Ratatoullie has Linguini's girlfriend Collette who is promoted in a role that few women can achieve in the kitchen/chef world. Wall-E has EVA who was pivital to the story.... ugh, I could go on. Now does the Tolkein story appeal more to men? I'd say mostly, yes, but I do know for a fact there's no shortage of female fans. Tolkein came from a background of War, and he poured his personal feelings and experiences into the stories, and sadly that came from a world with a very limited amount of female influence, even though his mother, who died early in his life, was a great influence on his love for language, which shines beautifully in the books. You could say, the languages and races were woman inspired, while everything else was he himself reflected in the stories. That's Tolkein in a nutshell. 

<sarcasm> There weren't enough positive role-models for children goblins or orcs, either. I think Tolkien was xenophobic. Orcs and goblins deserve equal treatment! </sarcasm>

Why are all the bad guys/weak characters in Tolkien male?

There is one other reason he never wrote about women the elf writer was a speachless ooaf around them and maybe he was a closet kinda guy

Didn't read the book --- yeah, obviously! Didn't really watch the first trilogy either or you would have caught the heavy stance on letting the women join the fight! The love, marriage and children of Sam & Rosie? There where woman and children everywhere! Bad, bad, bad commentary not fit to be printed.

Only women were able to kill the Nazgul. There was no species that only men could kill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrCvgiQGh1o

There aren't "very few women in Tolkien's world".  There are plenty of women in Tolkien's world - but it's an ancient world in which women stayed at home.  You know, just like OUR WORLD USED TO BE.  (In fact, it IS our world.  Tolkien was writing a mythology for England, so "Middle Earth" is in fact OUR Earth.)  So why would anyone expect it to be populated with a$$-kicking babes?  Because audiences have gotten so accustomed to comic-book nonsense and adolescent fanboy fantasies of what women "ought to be", so much so that they now expect movies to go against everything we know about the past (or mythologies) to present us with silly unrealistic flimflammery about girls who can beat up armies and chicks with enormous breasts wearing nearly nothing.  No, thanks.  At least Tolkien knew enough about history to be able to write a story that fit in with the way things used to be a very long time ago.

Why is it that a book with only or mostly women is "brave" or "pro-female" but a book written purely for little boys is somehow sexist? This isn't for you. Nobody cares if you don't like it. Grow the hell up.

I think it is fairly obvious why Tolkien did not put so many women in the book,  and I am surprised why anyone would make a huge kerfuffle over it.  JRR Tolkien  was an Oxford don born in the 1890s and the bald truth is that the man lived in a world that was much more closed to women than today, meaning the United Kingdom c. 1918-1948.   Oxford University did not admit women as full members until 1920 and  it was only five years after that date that Tolkien started working there; women teachers and students would still have been a minority at Oxford and in fact all of Tolkien's drinking buddies in the Inklings were male (he wrote about what he knew, and sorry, Arwen Undomiel sitting down and enjoying a tankard with Gimli the Dwarf would have been unthinkable to the author as, horror of horrors, women drinking with the boys  at the pub was gauche.)

 Tolkien grew up  and lived in a world where women could not vote at first let alone dream of anything beyond hearth, home and husband (such remained largely true for the whole time he was teaching at Oxford and writing the books.) He was a brilliant writer and academic, but also a product of his environment. As a female myself I do not fault him one bit for the type of book he wrote.  He never dreamed of a world where a woman would be independent. 

That's what i call...The Dark Ages...!!!!

While this is a stellar example of satire, there is a legitimate point to the discussion, a point that Peter Jackson, ironically enough, attempts to address in a small way with the inclusion of the scene with the 'elf princess', which was not included in the novel "The Hobbit" as a unique scene.   The lack of women in the story is a fact, and not a surprising one given the basis of this myth cycle that Tolkien created.  Better, said, the lack of women is simply an artifact of the age of the source inspiration as well as the author.   So, we must admit the paucity of feminine characters in this movie.  What little that could be done to address this effectively, was in fact done, and the rest we shall have to admire, or not, based on it's remaining merits.  Sigh.  

Back to this piece then, I very much appreciate the humorous slant.  To feign concern about the perpetuation of the various species in a fantasy story - that's pretty rich.  The usual concern in fantasy heroic epics is perpetuation of the self... perpetuation of the species is rather an afterthought, so I was quite delighted at this unexpected witticism.  I especially appreciate that the author, after several paragraphs of observations and comments, finished with such a trifling concern - irony in most delicious form.  I am interested in more satire when the author deigns to provide it again.

LOTR was written by a man when men were men. He was simply very bad at writing female characters. Although Galadriel was the most powerful being in Middle Earth after Sauron. She was certainly much more capable than her husband Celeborn.

There are many women in Tolkien's work, and some of the very best characters too! Galadriel is the most interesting Elf, and Eowyn's story is arguably the most moving of the entire trilogy. And if you go back into the Silmarillion, you will find Luthien and Melian among others. But the foolish author of this article has never read the books, and instead of keeping her mouth shut decides she rather try to apply modern feminist thought to an ancient myth structure that abounds with male warriors. What an idiot.

I'm not sure if this has occurred to anyone, so I'm just going to throw this in.  Tolkien could have had several reasons for not putting many women in LotR.  We will never know the real reason unless we bring him back from the dead.  However, it occurs to me that while some male writers write female roles well, others don't.  Perhaps Tolkien didn't write many female roles, simply because he knew that he wouldn't be able to do it well.  He wasn't a woman after all, he was a man.  I'm not saying Tolkien couldn't have written a female role, but perhaps just decided not to, for this reason or any other.

From reading many of the comments lambasting Ms. Konigsberg I have to wonder how many people actually read the article?  A good deal of the commentary seems to involve the projection of cartoonish and stereotypical feminist rhetoric onto her views about Tolkien's book and the subsequent film.

Ms. Konigsberg is not calling for The Hobbit to be rewritten as a feminist manifesto, nor is she bashing Tolkien as anti-feminist.  She is merely pointing out what Tolkien scholars and readers have acknowledged for decades, that there is a paucity of female characters in Tolkien's world and those who do appear have little depth.  

For those who argue that The Hobbit and LOTR are books about battle (patently untrue) and therefore outside the realm of female experience, I would counter that war does not just affect men.  Tolkien wrote during World War I, when tens of thousands of women served as nurses and support personnel, and even in some combat positions in Russia.  More importantly, though, war disrupts the lives of everyone in society, not just those fighting.   One need not write just about warrior women to depict women during times of war.  Nor does every woman need to be a Xena or Laura Croft in order to depict the female experience.

I love The Hobbit and LOTR.  I have read the books many times since I was a teen, many decades ago.  However, even those who are devoted to the books need not be so thin skinned about the works that valid criticism about their weakness (and Tolkien's female characters are a weakness) cannot be discussed.

There are women in Middle Earth, but they are not going to be in a group of adventuring thieves that Tolkien writes about.  Speaking to Lisa1's comment, I don't know if it was a metaphor or not, but I am aware that sexism in general life at that time in history was the norm.

Tolkien's books are metaphors about World War I. Women were not in combat then. I think he is speaking about the evils of war and the bond among men in war. I don't think he means to be sexist.

A "Senior" Editor at Time writing a critical article about something she admits she knows nothing about. So what else is new?

If you want more women in your reading pick up the A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones on HBO) series by George R. R. Martin. Women play a prominent role in this series and its basically adult themed Tolkien..without the annoying elves and dwarves. Well there is one dwarf...but not the same ;)

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Tolkien once addressed the questions of women in his books directly. I don't recall the actual quote, but he felt that he could not adequately write a female character.

Furthermore, the story of the LotR is not about "lopping off limbs", it's about what very mortal and fallible people have to do when confronted with a vastly more powerful and supernatural evil with almost no supernatural power on their side.

The books are harder to read later in life, but are definitely worth the effort, women or no.

Except the Hobbit, you can rip through that in an afternoon.

I'll forego the beating-up on Ruth, it's all been done below. Just some "Tolkien facts":

- As Tolkien stated in his works, there were certainly both female and male dwarves. However, the female dwarves did not look very different from the male dwarves, and their gender differences were not on display.

- Even in this one movie, hobbit children and parents were shown: Don't know how you missed that. As for Bilbo and Frodo: Bilbo was exceptional in not having wife & children, and Frodo's parents had drowned. The LoTR has lots of hobbit geneologies, if you're curious: Both they and Tolkien were well aware of the birds & the bees.

- Descent through the father: Yes, Tolkien's tale is modeled after Anglo-Saxon epic & mythology, and in that context, descent is traced through the father: That's what is meant by a patriarchal system. That's the way his model worked, so that's the way his story worked.

- No strong female characters: You've been proven wrong on this point so many times below that it's a waste of time to prove it again. However, what I bet you're really getting at is that there is no relationship stuff - LoTR/H has no "chick lit" aspect. Well, it was published in the mid-1950s, so there wasn't any chick lit. And it's tough to see how to fit that in with the mythic flavor. The closest it gets is with the triangle of Aragorn, Eowyn and Faramir - which is fairly thin gruel. Tolkien just wasn't a terribly emotional guy.

The trouble is, if they had decided to go all PC and include a number of women in the main cast (probably throwing in a few token blacks too), no only would they have rightly received lots of complaints for trashing the source material, but you'd still have lots of silly "feminists" moaning that they didn't like the portrayal of the female characters. Cast Bilbo as female, then it shows females are small and weak and not good at fighting (but kind hearted and try their best). Cast any Dwarf but Thorin as female and then she's still bowing down to her male master. Cast Thorin as female and it's implying that women only greedy and care about gold and jewels. Plus of course any women below about 30 would be just seen as eye candy, by the feminists.

I don't think this is the problem that Ms. Konigsberg seems to think it is.  (Her very name means "King's Mountain."  What about the QUEEN'S Mountain, hmmmm?)  Of course there are women in Middle Earth, and we meet a few of them in the novels--several of them very strong women.  But these are adventure stories, and in the world that Tolkien creates, the women are home keeping those homefires burning, rearing the children that the male dwarves and hobbits and elves begat on them, and generally doing "womanly" things.  Am I offended by this as a modern American woman?  Nope.  I like a good story, and I know that every author is a child of their cultural and historical place.  If Tolkien were alive today, perhaps there would be more strong women characters in his novels.  But I don't know that you get much stronger than Arwen or Eowyn.  

A few years ago, I took some visiting family to Colonial Williamsburg.  We ran into Patrick Henry there, and someone asked him what he thought about women voting in the Republic that he and his pals were creating.  He was scandalized!  "Why would any woman want to do that?" he asked.  "Don't you know that you have to travel to the county seat to cast your vote, and that can take days of hard riding through all kinds of nasty weather!  She might have to stay in a tavern along the way, if she is lucky enough to find one.  If a woman were to leave home to go vote, who would manage the household while she is away?  Women voting !  The very idea!"  Should we be offended by Patrick Henry's attitude about women?  The very idea!     

To Call this article a waste of time Would be Considered a Waste of Time