page_title: Women in The Lord of the Rings
section_title: Context
hierarchical_section_title: Women in The Lord of the Rings / Context
caption_attribution_description: Pembroke College, Oxford
context_page_description: The roles of women in The Lord of the Rings have repeatedly been asserted to be insignificant, in a story about men for boys, though other commentators have noted the empowerment of the three major women characters, Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen.
  The work's author, J. R. R. Tolkien, indeed spent much of his life in an all-male environment, and did have conservative views about women. Much of the action in The Lord of the Rings is by male characters, and the nine-person Fellowship of the Ring is entirely male.
  On the other hand, the Elf-queen Galadriel is powerful and wise; Éowyn, noblewoman of Rohan, is extraordinarily courageous, killing the leader of the Nazgûl; and the half-elf Arwen, who chooses to be mortal to be with Aragorn, the man she loves, is central to the theme of death and immortality that runs through the work.
context_section_description: The author of the bestselling fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien, was orphaned as a boy, his father dying in South Africa and his mother in England a few years later. He was brought up by his guardian, a Catholic priest, Father Francis Morgan, and educated at boys' grammar schools and then Exeter College, Oxford, which at that time had only male students. He joined the British army's Lancashire Fusiliers and saw the horror of trench warfare, with life as an officer made more bearable by the support of a male batman or servant. After the war he became a professor of English Language at the University of Leeds, and then at the University of Oxford, where he taught at Pembroke College. At Oxford, he created an all-male literary group with another Oxford professor of English, C. S. Lewis, the Inklings. 
  Among his influences, Tolkien stated that he enjoyed reading boy's adventure stories, such as those by Rider Haggard and John Buchan. Tolkien stated in an interview that Haggard's novel She was his favourite. He also said that he had specially liked stories about "Red Indians" when he was a boy. 
  As seen in a letter to his son Michael Tolkien, he held conservative views about women, stating that men were active in their professions while women were inclined to domestic life. While defending the role of women in The Lord of the Rings, the scholar of children's literature Melissa Hatcher wrote that "Tolkien himself, in reality, probably was the stodgy sexist Oxford professor that feminist scholars paint him out to be".
caption: Secluded male environment: Pembroke College's Old Quad, where Tolkien had his teaching rooms
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