The Lord Of The Rings Gender Roles Essay

By societal standards today, women are characterized as strong and independent. Women have gained the right to vote and now largely populate workplaces everywhere. Certainly, Homer’s Odyssey cannot be compared to modern times as a feminist piece, it is usually portrayed as the exact opposite. In fact, Homer shows that women are responsible for many problems that arise in the epic. Yet, despite this there are still many powerful female characters. Additionally, most female characters play large roles. This differs greatly from Homeric times, in which women would not have as much power as female characters in the epic possess. Ordinarily, Greek women were represented as docile and obedient creatures who would not leave the trappings of the household. Although women in the Odyssey do show tendencies to conform in these expected, submissive ways, female characters exercise a large amount of power over the events of the Odyssey. This resulted in a collection of strong female characters, a stark contrast with the time. Throughout the Odyssey female characters are characterized as strong through many different ways. Female characters assume positions of power, use sexuality and/or wits to stay ahead, and offer crucial advice and help to Odysseus and Telemakhos.

When most people think of J.R.R. Tolkien, they often think of his great imagination and his world of great dragons, warriors, orcs, hobbits, wizards, dwarves and elves. But most people forget about the deeper meaning behind his stories and his controversy towards society. Tolkien was a British, fantasy, writer during the mid-1900s. Through his love of languages, religion, and country, J.R.R Tolkien’s works of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are controversial but masterpieces because Tolkien represents “good” as a fuller, more imaginative reality than evil.

The men throughout the Old English era played a very prevailing role in society. Men were the persons in society that were portrayed as the central leaders; being in charge of their homes and representing wisdom and strength. Because the men’s role in the Old English era was so dominant, there is a vast amount of literature about them, thus allowing women to be outshined. In fact, restrictions were placed on the majority of women during this period. However, as time evolved, the roles of women also evolved. In the Old English texts, The Wife’s Lament and Beowulf, the roles of women are seen as peace weavers, motivators, cupbearers and memory keepers, compared to the women in the Middle English text, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, who now play the roles of being protective, seductive and manipulative.

     I have thought about many different ways to organize this paper and have come to the conclusion that the best way to approach the topic is on a book-by-book basis. My perceptions of the gender biases in these books vary greatly and I did not want to begin altering my views on each so that they would fit into certain contrived connections. What interests me most in these stories is how the authors utilize certain character’s within their given environment. Their instincts and reactions are a wonderful window into how the authors perceive these “people” would interact with their surroundings and often are either rewarded or punished by the author through consequences in the plot for

Fairy tales are passed down through the generations. However, fairytales are embedded with gender dichotomies which stem from a dominant social ideology of patriarchy which put men above women. Traditional fairytales encourages women to be passive, gentle, eager to marry and have children, if they get in trouble and need help, they have to have self-restraint and wait for a handsome strong prince to rescue her. Although in modern adaptations of fairytales, women have a more equitable social positioning, being able to think and do things for themselves, whilst the expectations of men have lowered, and that men too can possess feminine qualities.

     Until recently, the role of women in literature has seemed to reflect the way they were treated in society. Women were seen as secondary to men, and their sole purpose in life was to please a man’s every desire. This is not the case in three specific literary works. The Odyssey, The Wife of Bath, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight use the actions of its women characters to greatly enhance important thematic elements. The women in each of these works use feminine psyche to persuade men to do things that men of the time would not usually do. The use of women in these literary works is very contrary to the prevailing ideals of the female and her responsibilities at the

In Gilgamesh, an epic poem, gender roles play a large role in the plot line. Even female goddesses had some key roles through this ancient epic. They might not have necessarily had the same strengths and duties to their male counterparts, but their roles were substantial. Even though the main characters in this epic, Enkidu and Gilgamesh, are male, women still had major roles in their tale. In the story of Ruth, Naomi and her mother-in-law defy gender roles and work for what they have in their place in society.

Warrior Women In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, his character Eowyn is not allowed to fight in the battle against the forces of Mordor because she is a woman. However, she disguises herself and goes along anyway. In the battle itself, she takes on the leader of the nazgul who states that no man could kill him. In response, Eowyn takes off her helmet, declares that she is no man, and stabs his head, killing him.

This was not specifically mentioned in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, however, Tolkien mentioned this fact in one of his works, entitled The War of the Jewels. The fact that female Dwarves looked exactly like males shows how sexist their race was. It is legitimate to conclude that female Dwarves played the most stereotypical role of women as housewives who should not be allowed to leave their home and avoid contact with any other males or races, therefore becoming imprisoned by their opposite gender. However, if we recall the fact that Tolkien himself compared Dwarves to Jews, it is noteworthy

While many patriarchal elements still exist in society today, women were oppressed to a much greater extent in earlier periods of human history. During the time Homer transcribed The Odyssey, women were not even allowed to participate in the theatrical performances; male actors played the female characters. Despite these conditions, female characters are very prevalent in the epic, and many of them even exert their independence outside of traditional gender norms at the time. At the same time, however, these women still exhibit a level of subservience, representative of the social constraints. Even though various women play strong, important roles in The Odyssey, their independence is diminished by the tendency to act submissively and often maternally, revealing the paradoxical nature of gender roles in general and specifically in Greek society.

Whether Female antagonists within fairy tales are portrayed in a positive or negative light their roles within the stories are very important if not crucial to the development of the protagonists. Karen Rowe in “Feminist and fairy tales” explains the divide between different female antagonists. Female antagonist come in all forms, Faeries, ogresses, evil queens, and evil witches step mothers and or step sisters. For the most part these characters are often divided between good and evil, or light and dark, but what is often realized, is that there isn’t much of a combination between the two groups in which an antagonist falls in between both categories. In this essay I will lay out the thematic roles of these different types of female antagonist’s portrayed within fairy tales.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s works have been analysed for decades and have often been criticised for the lack of female characters. Arguably his most cherished publications, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in particular has been condemned for the passivity of his relatively few female characters. Having said that however, throughout the three books, there are a number of female characters who combat the stereotypical role of women and subvert the norm of submission to a patriarchal authority. Arwen, Éowyn and Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return

Homer’s Iliad is undoubtedly focused on its male characters: Achilles, primarily, but also Hector and Agamemnon. Nevertheless, it seems that the most crucial characters in the epic are female. Homer uses the characters of Thetis, Andromache, and Helen as a basis for comparison to the male characters. Homer wants his audience to see and understand the folly of his male characters in choosing war over peace, aggression over kindness, and honor over family. While the behavior of these characters clearly speaks for itself, the contrasting attitudes and behaviors of the female characters proffer an alternative; in comparison, the reader can hardly fail to concur with Homer’s message that war, aggression,

Religion is a dominant force in culture, social standings, and human interaction. Though narrated in a religious society that is centered around Catholicism, the Chronicle of a Death Foretold is about an affluent young man named Santiago Nasar, who is murdered by twin brothers, Pablo and Pedro Vicario. As evident as the community prepares for the bishop’s arrival, religion is intertwined in their culture. So, with the potency of a religious head figure, civilians alter their daily lives to follow a religious protocol in the beginning of the book. Because religion is foundational in the book’s societal structure, it shapes aspects of gender, sexual engagements, and character interaction, it provides assistance to understanding the complexity of a character’s development and actions.

Fairy tales are full of tropes and stereotypes that exist from story to story, one of the main ones being the “happily ever after” ending. Most fairy tales, especially the traditional Perrault or Grimm versions, fall prey to this trope where the main goal is for the princess to find her prince, get married, and live happily ever after. Many critics, particularly feminist critics, find this trope to be problematic because of the extreme emphasis placed on marriage as women’s main, if not only, objective in life. Karen Rowe, for example, states in her essay “Feminism and Fairy Tales”, that “fairy tales perpetuate the patriarchal status quo by making female subordination seem a romantically desirable, indeed an inescapable fate” (342). In other words, Rowe relates the “romanticizations of marriage” portrayed in fairy tales with promotions of “passivity, dependency, and self-sacrifice” expected of women in their everyday lives (342). However, it can be dangerous to assume that every fairy tale conforms to the singular promotion of marriage as women’s only option. While early fairy tales such as “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty” tend to glorify the romantic ideal of marriage, and in turn female subordination, contemporary tales and adaptations such as Brave and Frozen, are working to give women a more powerful position.